1/2 way (& the Anatomy Scan).

As the title reads...I am 1/2 way done with this pregnancy!

No im not 20 weeks, I am 19.  However with the twins I will only carry to at most 38 weeks, so therefore I really am 1/2 way done, or maybe even more- we'll just have to see!

I feel like the last 6 weeks or so have just flown by, prior to that I felt like there was no way i could make it until May and just wanted to time warp and get this over with! Now I don't actually mind being pregnant since my sickness is basically gone and my energy is back, but we shall see what I say about that in 2 months when my belly is in the way of everything!

So lets move onto the Anatomy Scan....

  For those of you not familiar with that term, its basically just the big ultrasound you do at roughly 20 weeks to check everything on the baby, or in my sense- babies.   This helps them determine if there are any abnormalities with any of their organs, limbs, face, etc.  They also take a lot of measurements to make sure baby is up to par.   So here's just kind of a brief of what happened, we're starting with Baby B.


   Baby B (our little girl) is basically perfect in every way!  Her head and abdomen are about the same size, her legs and arms look great and she has all 10 fingers and 10 toes!  Her insides are also looking great, 4 chamber heart, 2 kidneys, bladder, stomach, not too much fluids in her brain, etc.  Her placenta is posterior, which means its on the back of my uterus and she is in front.  She is currently laying transversely across the top of my belly and they estimated she weighs about 10 ounces and is exactly where she should be at this stage!


   Baby A (our little man) is also bascially perfect in everyway! His head is a bit bigger than his sisters, but still right on track,  he also has 10 fingers and 10 toes and his Daddy's nose. (We get 3D ultrasounds each time so we get an idea of what babies actually look like, its really cool).  All of his insides look great as well.  He is estimated to weigh about 9 ounces.
   He however does have one stupid abnormality...with his umbilical cord.  A normal umbilical cord has 1 vein and 2 arteries, he has something called Single Umbilical Artery (SUA), so as the title indicates, he has 1 vein and 1 artery.  Apparently its super super common, and even more so among multiples pregnancies, they dont know why.   Our specialist told us its nothing we should be worried about, but how do I not worry? Seriously. I'm growing the cutest little man in my belly and then they tell me that there's something wrong with his umbilical cord....what the hell? Why is this even a thing?
   Anyway, so I have to have ultrasounds every 4 weeks to not only watch the growth of the babies in general, but to now pay closer attention to our little man. If for some reason he stops growing at the same rate as his sister, or they see anything else wrong they will have to deliver the babies early.  I'm trying to just think positive and not worry because this is so common and so many babies are born without problems, but I'm his Mom and I cant help by have this little worry inside my head.  Blah I just need a nice vacation away from my head, or Orem...that works too! (Someone tell my husband)


  So guys if you caught their weights I have over a pound of baby in me already! Singleton pregnancies dont usually get this way for another month or so! Anyway there's that, now here's some pictures for you to enjoy (and proof that inside my teeny baby bump there are actually 2 babes growing);




Baby Boy's creepy alien face

Baby Boy's arms



Baby Girls profile (kind of, its skewed)



Baby Girls legs & feet

(Early) Second Trimester.

My second trimester has started off, lets say interesting.  There are already pros and cons even though I'm only a month or so in. Seriously, its going to be a long pregnancy. Be forewarned, this post might be just a lot of complaining, I have to vent somewhere.

 I will not even try to sugar coat this; I hate being pregnant.  It is miserable, exhausting, and frustrating. I feel bad saying this because I know there are women who want to be pregnant more than anything (that was me only a few months ago). But honestly, its the worst thing ever and I cannot wait until its over.

 My sickness has definitely decreased, I've traded constant nausea and vomiting for acid reflux but its a lot more manageable, just pass me the TUMS.

 The most exciting thing so far was finding out the genders of "Baby A" and "Baby B" and finally being able to put names to the cute little faces I see on all of my ultrasounds!
In case you were curious, yes we found out the genders really early! Baby A is our little boy, and we knew his gender at 12 weeks (its hard to hide the little boy parts, not to mention he's not shy...at all).
Also at 12 weeks our Maternal-Fetal Specialist thought Baby B was a girl but thanks to the umbilical cord being in the way we couldnt tell quite yet,it actually took a few ultrasounds and at 16 weeks Baby B finally showed us her goods and gave the confirmation we were looking for- "Its a girl!"

 We are both really excited to be welcoming a baby girl and a baby boy into our family, the best of both worlds right?

 My pregnancy brain is kicking in pretty hardcore sometimes, I forget how to do my job sometimes , I forget to bring my puppies inside at night (until they start barking), I'm misplacing things all the time...and the list goes on.
 And the hormones, those have finally decided to arrive and affect my emotions. I cry over nothing, worry that I'm going to be a terrible mom-which makes me cry even more, I've yelled at Daniel over things that I've done wrong (sorry babe), and get annoyed of things way easier than I have in the past.  I'm just an emotional roller coaster over here, and I can't really do much about.

 My heart beats SO hard trying to get blood to my babies, it freaks me out and sometimes I really think I'm going to have a heart attack its beating so hard!

 I'm gaining weight like no one business, averaging a pound a week from week 1, so that'll give you an idea how much I've gained.  My doctor says I'm right on track though, so I guess there's nothing to worry about except maybe the fact that I'm gaining a pound a week and am having anxiety about it! Basically, I'm going to be freaking huge by the end of this.

  With the weight gain, it has to go somewhere and that somewhere is my belly! My belly started poking out a teeny bit around 11 weeks, around 15 weeks it was just a teeny bit bigger...then 16 weeks hit and I have tripled in size since last week. These babies are growing like weeds!  It honestly TERRIFIES me to know I am growing 2 babies, but there's no turning back now- this is happening!

  With the growing belly comes some slight problems. First off my pants (and even some of my leggings) no longer fit and I have officially graduated into maternity pants. Honestly though, they are the most comfortable things ever, I should've started wearing these weeks ago!
The next little problem, is round ligament pain, which is seriously PAINFUL, just think extreme growing pains in the bottom part of your abdomen...its not fun!  I can't do much to make it go away other than sleep it out.

 I feel like I eat a lot, an extra 500 calories/day seems like a lot of food for me at times, especially since my stomach feels tiny and can't hold anything!  I have some minor food cravings;  I notice I crave both spicy foods and really sweet foods (chocolate). This may be due to the fact that I'm growing babies of opposite genders and they both want their momma to eat different things....I'm just going with that story.  The bad thing is everything spicy & chocolate kicks up my acid reflux and makes me feel like garbage. Thanks babies, thanks.


 Overall although I am having a miserable time being pregnant, I could not be more grateful for the opportunity to finally be a mom. For a while there I thought I would never get pregnant and that I was being punished for placing a baby for adoption when I was younger. We are not religious people but I know our families and some friends were praying for us to get pregnant, and who knows; maybe those prayers were what helped?  

First Trimester.

Since I'm in the last week of my first trimester, I figured I'd share a few highs and lows of the last few months!

The first two months were rough, I was tired all of the time.  It seemed like no matter what I did I was tired.  I would come home from work around 4, take a nap until 6 and then go to bed again around 9! I usually can't sleep if I take a nap that late in the day, but for the first few months all I wanted to do was sleep! Thankfully within the last month I've been able to get by without my after work nap, but I've still been going to bed around 9, I feel like such an old lady!

As some of you may have seen on my Facebook, I have been sick! When I get sick, I get REALLY sick.  Just think, non stop nausea, constant vomiting and food aversions (meaning I can't eat or smell certain things without running to the bathroom needing to vomit). I have cried so many times because no matter what I do it doesn't seem to get any better, and I honestly think its getting worse the more pregnant I become!  Heaven help me, its going to be a long 9 months!
To try and help my sickness I have taken Diclegis & Zofran, both worked for a little while but then stopped (I guess my body got used to them). I've drank Ginger Ale & Sprite to the point where I hope I never drink them again (thats a lie, I have a bottle of ginger ale in my fridge).  I even made my husband to go the store for me the other night to buy me anything that he thought would help, I ended up with Lemon Ginger Herbal tea and Lemon Drop candies.   They both help keep my stomach in tact for a while, but nothing lasts.   I need to start trying some of the ideas you all gave me on Facebook!

With my being constantly tired and sick my house has suffered, I seriously did not do laundry for a month and the dishes? Ha yeah right!   Thankfully I have a bit more energy now and my house is staying clean (plus I have clean clothes again).

So enough for the lows, lets talk about the highs of my first trimester!


I had my first real doctors visit (outside of the Fertility Center), and honestly after seeing my doctor I am terrified to be having twins!  He told me that I will be put on bed rest (or as he called it, house arrest) at some point near the end of my pregnancy. He also wants me to gain 50-60 pounds! Oh my gosh! ahh! The goal is to get to 38 weeks and then I will deliver, I'm keeping my fingers crossed I don't have a C-section but I'm preparing to have one, just in case.
To keep my babies healthy I have to take Prenatals, Folic Acid & Iron pills, and I have to see not only my normal doctor, but an OB and a Maternal-Fetal Specialist! Basically, I'm going to have a million doctors appointments between now and May (I have 3 in the month of November). It'll be an interesting 6 months!

My belly, yes its starting to grow, but No its not even at all worth showing you all yet! I know I know, I have a ton of friends pregnant with their 2nd baby right now who's bellies are popping and I'm sure you are all wondering where mine is, since you know- I'm having twins (and its technically my 2nd pregnancy).  Trust me, I'm asking myself the same thing! I honestly thought that I was going to look pregnant by the end of October, but instead I'm stuck in the fat stage (the stage where you aren't sure if someone is pregnant or just ate a few too many french fries).  But don't worry ladies, come 37 weeks my belly will probably be twice the size of yours, so don't be jealous that I'm hardly showing now!

So the most exciting thing (to us) is that we got to have not 1, but 3 ultrasounds in the last few weeks! I am so ecstatic about this because with my first pregnancy I only had 1 ultrasound at 18 weeks, so the fact I get to watch my babies grow through a little monitor is AMAZING!    I had an ultrasound at 7 weeks (which is when we found out about the twins), one at 9 weeks, and then my most recent one was at 12 weeks! My next is at 18 weeks and then I have one every month there after, we have to make sure the babies are growing at the same rate!  Its so amazing to watch how quickly the babies grow and change, it makes my heart happy seeing them!

Both babies look fantastic, they both have all 4 limbs, strong heartbeats and are growing just like they should be!  In my ultrasound pictures one of the babies always looks bigger than the other one, but in reality they are just about the same size! Also baby B is kind of a butthead, he/she is upside down and facing away from us so its harder to see her/him.

The Twins are Fraternal, which means they come from 2 separate eggs (and you can tell in my ultrasound pictures because they are in 2 sacs). they could look alike but not any more alike than just siblings born at different times.  Thankfully fraternal twins have less complications than Identical twins since they have their own nutrient supply (aka placenta).

Baby B at 9 weeks

Baby A at 9 weeks

Baby A at 12 weeks

Baby B at 12 weeks

As I mentioned, my next ultrasound isn't until 18 weeks, but at that time we will know genders and make sure everything is good with the babies! (Confession; the doctor that did our ultrasounds at 12 weeks may have told us what the gender of Baby A is, and a good guess on Baby B. But since we aren't 100% sure yet we are keeping it a secret).



Anyway, I'm excited to say "peace" to the first trimester and hope that although I have a growing belly that my second trimester is easier than the first one has been, I will let you know!

The Journey to Pregnancy.

I know some of you are curious to hear the entire story on how the Twins came to be, so I figured I'd start a blog and tell my tale of getting pregnant as well as document my pregnancy and life! Be forewarned I suck at this kind of thing, so if its horrible I am sorry, however I hope you all enjoy! 

 Getting Pregnant did not come easy, nor was it fun. It took us a long time, a lot of money, and a lot of doctors but we are finally here! To get into details on how we ended up doing Invitro Fertilization (IVF) we have to go back to the very beginning. 

 When I fell in love with Daniel 4 years ago, I knew I wanted to have babies with him. He had a vasectomy done after his divorce a few years earlier but ensured me that it could easily be reversed, I didn't know anything about vasectomy reversal and so of course I was fine with the idea and married him a few months later (although the kids idea probably would not have been a relationship breaker for me). Anyway so this was 2011, let's move to 2013.

 We (with a lot of convincing on my side) decided that we would finally have Daniels Vasectomy reversed and start trying for babies. In March 2013 we finally had enough money for the surgery (seriously it's not cheap, I highly recommend being 100% certain you are done having kids before getting fixed! a reversal runs around $5,000 right now). So we scheduled his surgery and he got un-fixed. I was so excited when the doctor came out and told me he was able to put both sides back together and everything looked great! This was it, it was my turn to finally be a Mom! 

 A few months after his reversal surgery Daniel had to go in for a semen analysis to see how much sperm he was producing and check the quality of it, pretty normal stuff. The results came back.....there was no sperm. His reversal did not work. I was crushed, I put my husband through that long surgery for nothing! Now what the hell were we supposed to do?

 Fast forward about 6 months, I had no idea what we were going to do to have a baby, we spent all this money trying to reverse his vasectomy, there was no way I could afford any more treatments for a long time! One day at work I was talking to one if my cute coworkers, we somehow got onto the subject of infertility and she advised me that our health insurance covers infertility treatments! I was so excited, so naturally we immediately made an appointment with the Utah Fertility Center to get this process started, this was in October 2013. Unfortunately I learned I was on the wrong insurance plan, and so we couldn't really get started until January. 

 January 2014, the start of IVF. After our Doctors reviewed both mine and Daniel's situation they figured this was going to be easy peasy. We'd both had children in the past, we were still young and healthy, the only trial they could see what Daniels Vasectomy reversal failed and so we just needed to extract sperm another way. Everything for me checked out fine, and so I started the IVF process right away. I will tell you, that IVF sucks, I hated almost every minute of the process, I'm so glad its over! 

 During IVF you take a million different kinds of medicine, sometimes I didn't even understand why I was taking what I was taking (ex. Birth Control Pills, like what?) but I did what they told me to and didn't ask too many questions. So anyway ill break down the different medicines I had and what they were for (at least from my understanding). 

 Birth Control Pills - this helps them control your menstrual cycle, basically you have a period when they want you to have one. 
Antibiotics - kind of obvious, but its to get all yucky-ness out of your body before the embryo transfer. 
Injectables- I wish I could remember the names of the different shots I had to do, but giving myself a shot in my stomach every morning was not fun and isn't really something I wanted to remember having to do. So yes, I gave myself a shot in my belly every morning, and sometimes at night. One of the medicines was making my eggs bigger so it was easier to retrieve them, the other was making my uterine lining thicken so when they put the eggs back in my uterus was ready for them. 

 There was a couple of other things involved, but for the most part that was it.

 Once my body was all ready to go, we scheduled my egg retrieval & Daniels sperm retrieval for sometime in Mid-Feburary, both the same day. I went first and after they were done with me, Daniel's procedure should have been really quick and we would be done. For the egg retrieval they put me under general anesthetic so I don't remember anything, as I was waiting for Daniel to get done I started to worry with how long it was taking, we were told it would only be like 20 minutes, it had been over an hour! 

 Finally Daniels doctor came in to talk to me, he told me that they poked a needle in him 6 times (3 on each side) and collected exactly 0 sperm and they could not figure out why. I was crushed! I immediately started crying, this was it, my husband is broken and the doctors don't know what to do! This day was terrible, it was one of the worst days of my life, I was told my husband was sterile and I might have to use a sperm donor to have children. This was seriously so heartbreaking for us. They froze my eggs that day and decided to refer us to another Doctor up at the U who specialized in male infertility in hopes he could help.

 July 2014, Daniel had been given Chlomed by his doctor at the U to help increase his testosterone and hopefully force his body to start making sperm. In July we scheduled a testicular biopsy for Daniel, I'm pretty sure its as painful as it sounds, but Daniel won't admit to being in pain. Anyway, his doctor had to put Daniel under general anesthetic this time and actually went in and cut out a piece of his testie. 

Daniel prepping for 2nd surgery

 I got the call from the Doctor after the surgery and he told me.....there is sperm! Lots of it! I didn't know whether to start jumping up and down or start crying! I was so excited that we could finally move onto the next step! The lab director from the Utah Fertility center was up at the U Surgery Center during the surgery, he took Daniel's sperm and brought it down to the Utah Fertility Center labs. They unthawed and fertilized my eggs that day! 7 eggs were fertilized, 5 took. After 3 days we only had 3 eggs left, and on day 5 there was 1 really good one and 2 kind of eh ones. They froze 1 egg on day 5, and the 2 eh ones made it to day 6 and were frozen (these are the 2 that are now babies growing in my belly). 

Embryos Transferred

 August 2014, I started into a Frozen IVF cycle, this one was MUCH different than the fresh cycle, in some ways it was better and in others it was worse. Reasons it was better: I only had to go to the doctors office like once every 2 weeks instead of 2x/week or so. The medicine however SUCKED! This time I got a shot in my bum every single morning, and on 2 nights/week. Daniel had to do these for me for obvious reasons, he hated doing them and I hated getting them. The shots started in August, the embryo Transfer was August 28th and I stopped the shots October 15th. So as you can see, I had to do them for a long long time!

Pregnant :D

 September 4, 2014, I had a pregnancy blood draw scheduled in a few days, but I was far too anxious to wait so naturally I went and bought a home pregnancy test and took it....it was Positive! I wanted to cry and scream and dance around all at the same time, all this work had FINALLY paid off! I was FINALLY pregnant! We had the blood test the next week to confirm the pregnancy, and an ultrasound a couple of weeks later in which time we learned that both the embryos we transferred took and we are having TWINS!!! 

 Daniel and myself are so excited to be parents (again for him). I will create more blog posts with pregnancy updates, announcements, etc. But in the meantime, let me know what you guys think.