Week 15 !!!!

Ok, so, I know I said I wasn't going to get excited but it just keeps happening.

We're into the 15th week now and although it's not been trouble free we're getting closer and closer to B-Day (Birth Day). We had our first appointment with the consultant last week and we're already talking about delivery dates - the official date is February 20, 2010 but with it being twins we can knock an extra fortnight off that date.

So, we're expecting the kids to arrive on February 6 next year (not sure of the time yet but mid-morning would be good!!) Bizarrely, to me anyways, we *will* be able to predict the time as the consultant said the best way forward will be a caesarian - by all accounts twin #2 can suffer quite a lot of trauma if we're not careful so as long as Elly is comfortable with being cut open, a c-section it is. From my perspective, anything that's quick, safe and painless for Ell and the twins gets my vote.

For the moment, that's pretty much it. We're still avoiding planning the rest of the pregnancy as it's still too early. I'll be happier when we hit 24 weeks, then I'll be ready to start the serious window shopping for prams, cots and the like. Until then the breath-holding and the waiting games continue - every day is one day closer.

The furthest I've got planning-wise is to prep my final two weeks of holiday time - looks like I'll take a week in October to decorate the nursery with my mum and dad and a second week in November when I plan to take on the living room. Oddly I'm quite looking forward to ripping the living room apart - maybe I'm going through a nesting period :)

Twelve week scan

Today was our 12 week scan, the day when the medical types tell us how the babies are doing and whether there are any problems.

I have to admit, I was a bit nervous of the whole thing really, this time around I'm a big fan of the 'no news is good news' approach - if there's nothing to report then everything must be fine and it can blumin well stay that way!!!

I was expecting a 10 minute in and out appointment with a quick glance at the kids before being booted out and told to come back at 20-something weeks.

It turned out we were in with the sonographer for almost an hour as she tried to get Elmo and Grover (Elmo sounds so much better then Shady..) to play ball so they could be measured, which proved somewhat more difficult then you would imagine. For the first 10 minutes or so there was much bouncing, floating, nodding off and random arm and leg motions which didn't prove so useful to the lady with the magic medical wand but was fabulous from where I was sitting.

Both of the kids were terrifically busy which made for great viewing - I swear I could have sat there all day and just watched them doing foetal-stuff. We got some great pictures (see Elly's blog for them and for the technical details) and I even managed to spot Grover's umbilical cord.

It has to be said that as a result of their energetic display, I am now convinced they will be Olympic athletes or, at the very least, Nobel Prize winners., that level of activity can ONLY be attributed to very bright and physically active offspring and I refuse to hear any different.

We made it to twelve weeks, the next major milestone is 20 weeks, I'm counting the seconds...

I'm not fat, I'm a modern man!!

New research shows that some men can put on sympathy weight with their pregnant wives.

By all accounts prospective fathers can gain up to a stone in weight according to the survey from Onepoll.com.

Part of me thinks this is a load of old marketing tosh designed to promote Onepoll.com, however, the sticky-out, slightly wobbly front part totally agrees.

Joking aside, it does make me wonder if there's more to this then meets the eye, though I don't suffer from morning sickness, swollen ankles and the like, I have noticed I've been plagued with ravenous hunger of late and, oddly, can get quite emotional for absolutely no reason whatsoever - very bizarre.

Ah well, today's Friday, two more days till we get to see the kids on Monday when we go for the 12-week scan - can't wait to say hi and see them moving about. We've tentatively nicknamed them Shady and Grover (for reasons I won't go into). Shady is twin #1, on the left of the scan pics and is usually to be found in an odd position that I can only describe as 'feet towards the scan probe', my suspicion is that Shady is a little girl. Grover, on the other hand, is side-on so you can see him in profile, at the scan the other day he was nodding his head and having a good old float around - I suspect Grover is a little boy.

Am I right? or mad? or both? I was hoping the sonographer might get an early guess in as to sex next week but I'm told it's far too early to tell but I'm keeping fingers crossed :) though quite honestly I don't care whether they're boys or girls as long as they're happy and healthy.

The bloody waiting ...

How is it that only when a woman is pregnant, bleeding can be "unexplained"?

We're almost at the 12 week mark now and once again Elly is suffering some bleeding. It's not bad enough to panic about but it happens on a semi-regular basis and it usually puts us on edge after the problems we had with Matthew.

Every time it gets "bad enough" we head over to the Early Pregnancy Unit and the ladies there do a scan to show everything is OK and now and again Ell has an anti-d injection because of her blood type.

But they also tell us there's no obvious signs of a problem and no obvious sign of any cause for the bleeding so therefore it's unexplained. In almost any other situation if the red stuff comes out of somewhere they're willing to find out why and it frustrates me greatly that this is just left to sort itself out.

I *know* it's still early, I *know* it's uncommon and I *know* there's not much can be done about it but it doesn't stop either of us from fretting - we might be 12 weeks in (one third-ish of the way there), but it just means the next 34+ weeks seem to stretch out for a very, very, very long time...