The Twisted Sisters update....

Ok to start I can't take credit for the title.  I read a forum post from two teenage girls who were monoamniotic twins.  They wrote a great post from the perspective of surviving and thriving twins.  Their family called them the twisted sisters while they were in-utero.

Ok on to more important matters.  We have been a bit busy over the past 12 days since our last post.  We went on a road trip with my grandparents and I must say Joy was quite the trooper. We traveled to Helen, GA; Atlanta, GA; Tuskegee College; Montgomery, AL; Biloxi, MS; New Orleans, LA;  and Hot Springs, AR. I'd have to say New Orleans was the highlight of the trip.

We toured the French Quarter and took a bus tour of the city.  We also had a wonderful meal at "The Palace".  I even got a picture of Joy on Bourbon St.  I think there must be a bit of cruelty involved in taking a pregnant woman to Bourbon St, being that she can't drink and every other block smells quite foul.  The latter has a tendency to turn her stomach.  My personal opinion is that there is a reason people get drunk and come out at night.  It makes the town a little prettier and less smelly :).  Really though we had a good time getting away.  It's too bad we didn't have a little more time there to listen to some music at the house of blues or something thing.

Ok ok,  I know this isn't suppose to be a blog about vacations. So on with the good stuff.  Joy doesn't really have any new symptoms.  She has started to feel the babies move more the past few days.  She felt them about 4 weeks ago, but since then she hasn't really noticed.   Just to day she was standing and stopped to go "Oh I think I just felt them again".  Four more weeks and its my turn to feel the kicking action :).  Maybe the'll start working on they soccer, skating, or cycling legs.

She still has some growing pains every day or two and seems to be getting bigger by the moment.  You'd almost swear her tummy was part Kudzu.  Today may have been the last day for non maternity pants.  Joy's also been experiencing more swelling in her ankles and hands lately.  I guess it's time for a little more potassium and laying down.  The trade off there is more heart burn.  Joy has also started a new thing lately.

She rubs her tummy.  Now there is nothing wrong with this and it is quite funny.  Especially when I catch her doing it.  The reason for the humor is earlier in this process she said "I don't want to be one of those women that is always rubbing their tummy".  Well welcome to motherhood.  There must be some sort of switch that gets flipped when the "bump" starts to appear.  I just hope she doesn't start patting her head too or I'm going to start worrying.

I do find it to be a strange thing.  When people know you are pregnant they want to touch your belly.  My aunt Kristen hadn't seen Joy in a few weeks and immediately touch Joy's stomach then was almost horrified and apologized asking if it was ok.  Joy laughed and said it was ok and it really was.  I have to admit, I can resist rubbing, or poking at her tummy.  The poking always gets a response from Joy though "No poking, rub the babies like this, no poking".  Followed by her little grin and giggle.

Another cute moment on the trip was Joy's PJ's.  She kept waking up in the night to visit the loo and she would find that her pants had slid just below her tummy and her shirt just above her tummy.  So basically, her tummy was all exposed.  She said it made her giggle every time. I guess it is better than geting grumpy about your third trip out of bed and it being only 3am.

Today was also our two week check up.  No surprises, everything looks great.  I can't believe how much they have grown though.  At our last ultra sound you could easily make out two babies.  Now it looks like a pile of babies.  It was so hard to figure out what you were looking at.  Baby A had a good profile shot as usual.  Baby B was shy as usual.  I felt a little bad for Baby A though....She had a face fool of her sisters cheeks and I don't mean the rosy ones either.  It kind of makes a guy wonder.....do they have "gas" at this point?   I mean, I know there is no air in there they are just breathing and swallowing amniotic fluid, but it makes you wonder is she passing amniotic fluid "gas"?.  Probably not since their little digestive tracks are filling with meconium, which a buddy of mine said looks like used motor oil.

Ah yes,  we are now on a quest for names since we don't plan to call them baby A and baby B all their lives.  Although, "Puppy" aka Sienna has never complained to me about her name and she is 2.  So our goal is to find something that is a bit uncommon, but not crazy.  It is really a pretty hard task to come up with names you are happy with.  I've talked to several parents and the general rule is to not share the name until you have the child.  That way people can't poo-poo the name.  Well, they can, but they aren't likely to do it to your face.  Anyway,  I have a few I kind of like, but they are either too common or Joy doesn't like them because they get spelled "wrong".  I'm glad we found out there were girls though.  I think that will open up the options more and we don't have to worry about boy names.

Here are the girls....

Well, that is all I've got for now.  I'm sorry I couldn't spread this out across a few more posts, but the internet wasn't first on my list of todo's while on vacation.

Gender Party

So does everyone have a guess on what you think the twins are? I suppose I could draw this out with some long winded response. Maybe I could even hide their gender in some cryptic message for those that couldn't make it to the party. I think I will spare you that and just use the tiniest font I can find.

ok...ok...That would be a little cruel.

They're GIRLS. It was a little bit of a shock even though the odds were 75% girls. The one ultra sound picture was pretty revealing so I had a hunch they were girls. However, I was quite perplexed when we were cutting the cake. I was expecting the center to be more redish pink. But we cut through it twice and it there was nothing on the knife. Again, I was expecting there to be some color on the knife. Even once we pulled the piece away I was going "well its not blue, but its almost white". It was a faint pink strawberry filling.

Now I can't wait to see these little girls. We can also start focusing on girls names. I must admit they are more fun to come up with. It seems girls have a wider selection for names. I must admit I'm a bit scared...raising two girls.....two curly headed, strawberry blonde, blue/green eyed girls. Oh man, how will we keep the boys away? :D

Thank you to everyone that made the very last minute party. We were planning on waiting to have a large weekend bash but once we had that envelope we could not wait. The pictures show a few of our guests, the gender photo and a picture of the cake.

Successful Appointment Today!

Hello everyone! Yes this is Joy and I will be much more brief then Jim and probably a lot more boring. I wanted to let everyone know that we were at Duke today for about 4 1/2 hours and everything looks fantastic. They reviewed all of the organs and they were looking for signs of any problems. Everything checks out and they are right on target, one measuring 18 weeks and one measuring 17 weeks and 6 days. They are only one day apart meaning that they are growing at basically the same rate which is what we want to see. It was fun and scary to see how tangled they were with each other. At one point all we could see were 4 legs all wrapped together and we could not tell very well which legs belonged to which baby. Then they would move apart and then back together again. After that we met with the Neonatalogist and she was very helpful as we try to make our decision on when we are ok with going into the hospital. She was super easy to talk to and provided us a lot of useful information. So the big question I know everyone has - are they boys or girls? Well we did find out but we do not know yet. We had them put the sex in an envelope and I dropped it off at the bakery tonight before I was tempted to peek. They will be making us a cake and they will either put a pink or blue filling in the cake. We will cut into the cake on Thursday!