The Beginning

I’m writing this blog because I am having one heck of a pregnancy. Zed and I live in an amazing little town. Everyone cares so much about one another. Everyone wants to help out one another. I love it. But this is a much easier way to explain to a lot of people all of the things going on during this pregnancy.

I’ll start by saying we started this year out with crazy high hopes of getting pregnant. We’d been trying for a long time. We have 2 boys- 5 &3 – that we got pregnant with incredibly easy and quick. At this point we are pretty sure that I have endometriosis and just kind of lucked out in getting easily pregnant with Mr. J and Otis. 2 weeks into the new year we got a call that Zed’s name was on a list for deployment, with a fast mobilization. We had only a few weeks to prepare. 2 weeks into our preparations we found out that I was pregnant and were completely thrilled that we weren't going to have to wait an entire year to start trying again. So it began.

Another few weeks later and Zed was gone, training in the northern end of the state, about 5 hours from home. The boys and I made 2 trips to visit him in the 3 weeks he was still in the state. The day before Zed’s group started to fly out to another base we were able to get into a Dr up north and have an 8-week ultrasound. We found out we were having twins. Identical twins.

This was extremely exciting and pretty much nerve wracking at the same time. Zed and I have a really great rule though, only one of us is allowed to have a break-down or freak-out at a time. It’s worked for us thus far. We came to a pretty good understanding that while he was going to be gone this entire pregnancy it truly was a part of God’s hand in the timing of all this. At this point we had no idea how much God’s hand really was aiding this pregnancy.

A few people asked us early on how we could tell that the twins were identical. It works like this. Fraternal twins happen when a woman ovulates 2 eggs, and both eggs get fertilized. It is easier to identify this in early pregnancy because there are two separate sacs in the uterus, each with a baby in it. With identical twins there is one egg that is released in ovulation, it becomes fertilized, and then proceeds to split.  When you look on an ultrasound the 2 babies are in 1 sac in the uterus, usually separated by a thin membrane wall so each baby has its own amniotic sac.

You see that there is one uterine sac and two babies. Pretty cool! 

This is the beginning of our crazy adventure. Having twins is rough on a body. Twice the baby really can cause twice the sickness and everything else. My older sister had twins a few years back and we really saw how much harder the twin pregnancy was on her than her regular pregnancy—which, by the way, the women in my family are notorious for having very rough pregnancies. We don’t really get a relief in the second trimester or any point in the pregnancy for that matter. We are exhausted the entire 40 weeks, and sick at least the first 13. Very sick. And we might get sick at any other time in the pregnancy randomly. It’s not an easy process for us. But we all love our babies. OK, enough sob story.

On to my complications. At my first regular prenatal appointment with the OBGYN that I had with my other two kids we took another look at the twins and everything was still looking good as far as heart rates and such. The problem is that on the little portable ultrasound machine the Dr had in my room we couldn't see the membrane that is supposed to be separating the two babies into separate amniotic sacs. At this point we weren't super concerned because of the quality of the ultrasound we were using. My Dr referred me to Maternal and Fetal Medicine a few weeks down the road so we could use much better technology. At this point I was about 11 weeks along and we had no reason to be concerned yet. I took my kids with me to visit my parents. and spread to word that we were expecting some cute little babies!

Well a little bit later the boys and I are back into our routine. On Sunday I was having an emotional day. First, I am pregnant and exhausted and sick. Second, I had just found out that my husband and his unit were officially leaving the country on their deployment. I went to church and played the organ for sacrament meeting, then piano in primary for the next 2 hours. If you've never experience hard piano benches for 3 hours, you might be missing out on all sorts of  numb-bum syndromes. The first problem came that afternoon when I woke up from my nap and was spotting. I've never spotted even a tiny bit in a pregnancy, and this was heavy spotting. I completely freaked out and called my home teachers (in the LDS church priesthood holders are assigned families in the ward to help keep an eye on, support, and lend general help to; in my ward I'm lucky enough that my best friends' husband is my current home teacher). They came along with some other priesthood brethren and my father in-law and gave me a blessing. We receive blessings for many reasons in the church, most commonly known and talked about are healing blessings. This blessing was primarily for peace I think, because I was not handling things well. I had talked to my Dr (who happens to be in the nearest "big city" 90 minutes away) and gotten his opinion. He was not overly concerned at the time and that helped calm me down to. Until there was more bleeding. I couldn't handle it anymore and called a really good friend and had her run me to the emergency room at our little hospital here in town.

All this time my husband is calling and texting me from the airports while he is still in the USA to keep updated. I spent several hours at the emergency room and found nothing wrong. The babies were healthy and active, which was the concern. I was put on bed rest until I could see my OB in a few days.

That few days later I went in for about an hour long ultrasound and my Dr decided I most likely had placenta previa and was going to be on very limited activity restrictions for a while. Placenta Previa is when the placenta (which is a giant mass of veins inside the muscle iteslf which provides nutrition to the babes) is sitting right on top of the cervix. Too much pressure (from maybe sitting on hard benches on a stressful day for hours on end) can cause it to bleed some. It's dangerous, but very manageable with minimum activity. 

So this is the beginning of my pregnancy. By the time I was 13 weeks along I was put on bed rest.