33 Weeks

I'm home! I was admitted to the hospital last Wednesday because I was experiencing frequent Braxton Hicks contractions and my cervix had shortened. I was put on a 24 hour course of inter venous drugs designed to stop the contractions of the uterus (and incidentally lower blood pressure). I was also administered two doses of steroid to hasten the development of the girls' lungs should they insist on making an early appearance. By Sunday, though I was exhausted from a lack of sleep and so made a bargain with my Dr that if he released me from the hospital, I would continue my bed rest from home. He agreed, providing an ultrasound of my cervix showed no further shortening and that my contractions were neither regular nor increasing in intensity.
Thankfully, my cervix had actually lengthened (bed rest works!), and my contractions were and have been inconsistent ever since. I am now happily at home in my bed where I spend all of my time.
This has to be be or will become hard on Ivan, I imagine. Each morning he gets up, looks after himself, River and then makes my breakfast and prepares my lunch for the day. This he leaves in a cooler by the bed. He then goes to work, runs errands and returns home to walk River. Once that's done, River is fed and Ivan cooks supper for us which we eat in the bedroom together. Any house work that needs to be done is done after supper clean-up. Then Ivan prepares his lunch for the next day. He also must take me to the numerous apointments that I have to attend in order to keep track of this amazing pregnancy. I wouldn't blame him if he didn't just drop me back at the hospital and leave me there one of these days! But that's it, that's what it can take to keep twins healthy and safe. I suppose it's a good warm up for their arrival!
It's hard to imagine, but really after next week they're safe to arrive. We'll try to do better than that for them, since they will surely have a stay in the NICU if they come at 34 weeks. But already they are each 4lbs 12 oz. Actually, that was one week ago, so they're probably over 5lbs now! The lowest weight that we would be comfortable with is 5lbs 8 oz. This makes them big enough to sustain a natural delivery and more likely to be able to nurse right away. Preemies have a hard time co-ordinating eating and breathing and often have to be fed by a tube. They can always learn to nurse later, but it does make it harder, and of course, I'd have to pump all of my breast milk. And I'll be honest, once the girls are here, I want to wrap them up and bring them home! So if we can get them to 37 weeks, they will be considered full term for twins and could potentially be good to go. That's 4 weeks from now. And that is a LONG time when you're as big as me!