Dos Bambinos Update
Yesterday marks the end of week 34 of The Mrs's pregnancy. In case you don't know, the weeks are counted from a woman's last cycle, and 40 weeks is considered full term. Anything prior to week 36 is considered premature birth, at least for a singleton baby. 36 weeks is actually the average time for twin gestation, and twins do mature slightly faster than a single baby in the womb.
Luke and Leia are looking good. We saw them on the ultrasound and their little four chambered hearts are pumping just right. Everyone is practicing their breathing and has arms and legs in the right places. My secret fear of them being Siamese twins is apparently not going to come true because we saw the membrane between them. Luke is quite a bit bigger than Leia, but not enough to cause worry at the moment.
The doctor told us that we have 'won'. We've dodged the pre-term birth bullet that a lot of twins and their parents have to deal with and our kiddos should be grown enough to survive just fine if they were to be born today. He expects them to be here in about another two weeks, which happens to coincide with their mother's birthday.
The only bad news is how they are facing, and even that is a good news/bad news kind of thing. They've both been breech since very early on. Breech isn't good for vaginal birth, so we've been trying to convince them to turn over for a long time now. Apparently they get regular pep talks during the day while I'm at work and unavailable to ridicule or otherwise interfere. But the two of them are getting pretty big for one uterus so we have been worried that they don't have enough room to turn over and face head down. Yesterday's ultrasound showed that Luke has finally turned over and is facing head down.
Unfortunately, Luke is higher up and in a vaginal birth would be born second. Leia is still in position to be the older, but she is still breech. Occasionally you can find a doctor that will do a breech birth, and the doctor told us that if the first baby was born head down she could clear the path for the second to be born breech. But if the first is breech and the second is head down, there is some potential for a dangerous situation because when they're positioned that way their heads are approximately on level, and as Leia moves down to be born her chin could catch on Luke's chin and they end up locked together and unable to be born.
So the short version of all that is this: Bad news - if Leia doesn't flip over it's a for sure cesarean. Good news - Luke had room to flip over so hopefully she will too.
It was really kind of neat (for me anyway, not so much for The Mrs). Wednesday was a bad day for The Mrs. There were lots of practice contractions and she was very uncomfortable all day. We suspect that may have been caused by Luke getting turned over to his new position. Right now The Mrs. is at the doctor twice a week, so it's pretty easy to pinpoint when he turned over.
Luke and Leia are looking good. We saw them on the ultrasound and their little four chambered hearts are pumping just right. Everyone is practicing their breathing and has arms and legs in the right places. My secret fear of them being Siamese twins is apparently not going to come true because we saw the membrane between them. Luke is quite a bit bigger than Leia, but not enough to cause worry at the moment.
The doctor told us that we have 'won'. We've dodged the pre-term birth bullet that a lot of twins and their parents have to deal with and our kiddos should be grown enough to survive just fine if they were to be born today. He expects them to be here in about another two weeks, which happens to coincide with their mother's birthday.
The only bad news is how they are facing, and even that is a good news/bad news kind of thing. They've both been breech since very early on. Breech isn't good for vaginal birth, so we've been trying to convince them to turn over for a long time now. Apparently they get regular pep talks during the day while I'm at work and unavailable to ridicule or otherwise interfere. But the two of them are getting pretty big for one uterus so we have been worried that they don't have enough room to turn over and face head down. Yesterday's ultrasound showed that Luke has finally turned over and is facing head down.
Unfortunately, Luke is higher up and in a vaginal birth would be born second. Leia is still in position to be the older, but she is still breech. Occasionally you can find a doctor that will do a breech birth, and the doctor told us that if the first baby was born head down she could clear the path for the second to be born breech. But if the first is breech and the second is head down, there is some potential for a dangerous situation because when they're positioned that way their heads are approximately on level, and as Leia moves down to be born her chin could catch on Luke's chin and they end up locked together and unable to be born.
So the short version of all that is this: Bad news - if Leia doesn't flip over it's a for sure cesarean. Good news - Luke had room to flip over so hopefully she will too.
It was really kind of neat (for me anyway, not so much for The Mrs). Wednesday was a bad day for The Mrs. There were lots of practice contractions and she was very uncomfortable all day. We suspect that may have been caused by Luke getting turned over to his new position. Right now The Mrs. is at the doctor twice a week, so it's pretty easy to pinpoint when he turned over.
posted by W at 3:33 PM
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