Pregnancy Is Not Burger King

Definitely not Burger King

From the Twin Daddy:

Here we are at 16 weeks heading into 17 weeks and falling behind on our blog.  It’s been a busy month for us with work projects, fencing tournaments, fencing exams, and training on my side.  On Mary’s side she finished grading all the work from her class, got her grades online, and then began cranking out pages for her dissertation.

As if to add to the wild ride I picked up a nasty cold and then the government passed the health care bill which spawned a series of contentious discussions all across the country.  I admit, I participated in these discussions myself and while generally civil I can be a bit smug as well.  I come from a family of gloaters and we’re just as likely to talk trash over a game of Monopoly as we are over politics.

Mary already mentioned the issue with velamentous cord insertion and this bears a bit more discussion I think.

How I make my plans

When we found out that Mary was pregnant I began creating a mental list of the different challenges we were going to face.  When we found out that we were having twins that list bumped up the toughness scale a few notches.

Then we enter a basic 4 step process:

1. Research the situation.
2. Make the best plan you can with what you know.
3. Work the plan to produce results.
4. Update and change the plan if necessary as you learn more.

That is a pretty good setup but pregnancy doesn’t play fair.  Pregnancy isn’t Burger King and our satisfaction isn’t guaranteed. Likewise it isn’t an engineering exam and you can’t study to get an ‘A’. You solve the problems you can, make the best plans you can, and then hope for the best. I expect most times that works.

My wife is doing fine and the kids have strong heartbeats like triphammers as we heard during out last appointment. Unfortunately, we have run into another ‘what-if’ scenario called velamentous cord insertion for both twins that could cause complications during labor. (On the other hand it could just completely sort itself out and go away too.)

The midwife tried to reassure us that they were just being cautious, but I made the mistake of heading to teach the fencing class that night and leaving my wife armed with a loaded Internet.  She went out and read about the stuff, which is of course scary, and I got home to find out she had been crying off and on since I left.  I don’t care what kind of rational man you are.  When your pregnant wife is crying, there is little you wouldn’t do to stop it.

This puts two issues on my pregnancy radar:

• Watch out for twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS).
• The velamentous umbilical cord insertions could mean that we’re looking at a C-section.

Now we get into some conflicting dissonance between our birthing center and the baby-ninja.

Baby-ninja: Recommends ultrasounds every 2 weeks after week 17 in order to watch for TTTS.

Birthing Center: Radiologists always want more scans.  We aren’t going to do another ultrasound until week 20 and after that we’ll do another scan every month to check things out.

Baby-ninja: Never mentioned velamentous cord insertion in their ultrasounds.

Birthing Center: Told us the baby-ninja’s ultrasound identified this and referred us to a perinatologist to do another round of ultrasounds at week 20.

Worse, the Birthing Center lady seemed surprised that when they dropped the new technical term on us that we wanted them to write the word down and then provide us with an explanation of what it meant.  This irritates me and I realize that I am not entirely rational in my perspective.

Why be so indiffirent to the baby-ninja’s recommendation for more ultrasounds while simultaneously offhandedly warning us about the velamentous cord insertion and then sending us to a high risk pregnancy doctor at week 20?   They had sung the praises of Dr. Hershey and his staff so that we believed he is the baby rock star.  They should not be surprised when they contradict the baby-ninja’s recommendation and then we twitch.

My friend Cindy is a good role model in this regard.  When she was diagnosed with diabetes she took an active role in her own treatment and had a few very direct conversations with doctors when she didn’t think they were giving her due diligence.  It turns out that diabetes medicine is rife with all sorts of conflicting and even dangerous bad information.  A group of my friends educated themselves on the latest diabetes research then literally bootstrapped their own health with better diet and an active and educated approach to their own health care.

It is like they don’t make the connection that we’re worried about this stuff and they drop phrases like “increased risk” without thinking it will make us go bonkers worrying about it.  After dealing with this on more than one occasion the twin daddy wants to go lie under his desk and growl at anyone who comes nearby.

Engaging in Positive Conflict

So, my birthing center can blame themselves (and Cindy) for what I did next.  I called Dr. Hershey’s office and explained the contradictions I already listed above.  They let me speak to one of their counselors who said they had seen the cord insertion issue but didn’t think it was too serious beyond keeping an eye on it.  She also promised she would send us some information and then put our file on Dr. Hershey’s desk. He is going to call our birthing center to explain why he made his recommendations.

So there it is…Dr. Hershey’s office did see the velamentous cord insertion but they didn’t think it was going to be any sort of issue.  “Yes, we want to keep an eye on it, but unless something changes it should not be a problem.”

With this in mind we need to add to our successful planning strategy for pregnancy:

1. Research the situation.
2. Make the best plan you can with what you know.
3. Work the plan to produce results.
4. Update and change the plan if necessary as you learn more.
5. Be an active participant in your own medicine.
6. Be prepared to handle conflict when it arises.

Somebody listening in there?

Our pregnancy books say that the babies are listening to us and will be able to recognize Mom’s voice and speech patterns.  They will recognize mine too but at least initially she gets top billing.

WifeWatch 2010

Food

Mary is eating smaller meals now and drinking water religiously.  We had one incident last week where she got sick and she stopped taking the prenatal vitamin for a couple of days to let her stomach settle.  She seems to be doing fine again in that regard.  She has had some additional hunger pangs which might indicate that we’re in for the next growth spurt.  Her tummy measurement did go up again this morning and eventually I’ll publish a tummy size chart.

Mood

There is a growing level of pregnancy discomfort and round ligament pain is starting to show up as her belly reorganizes.  It doesn’t help that her allergies are kicking in.  She can’t soak in the tub, and she’s limited to specific medicines.  She’s resorting to hot tea (decaffeinated) and I’ve been heating wet towels for her head to see if we can ease the congestion a bit.

Sleep

Mary is doing pretty well at sleeping on her side now, but she is also a bit fitful.

Babies Countdown – The Double Header

163 Days until September 9

I have added two new doctors’ appointments.  The first is with Dr. Sherrie McElvy who is the perinatologist.  The second is a more routine appointment with the birthing center.

• Thursday, April 1 is 17 weeks.
• Sunday, April 4 is our fist child birthing class.
• Thursday, April 8 is Twin Week number 18 and Halfway Home Day.
• Sunday, April 11 is child birthing class number 2.
• Wednesday, April 14 is our first appointment with the perinatologist.  Hope for gender information on this day.
• Thursday, April 15 is week 19, a doctor’s appointment at the Women’s Clinic, and Tax Day .
• Sunday, April 18 is child birthing class number 3.
• Thursday, April 22 is week 20 and our tour of the birthing facility at child birthing class number 4.  We should be feeling regular baby kicks by then.  (By this time we should also know the gender via ultrasound provided the little ones have not been shy.)
• Thursday, May 7 and the twins become viable as early as 22 weeks.
• Thursday, May 20 and 90% of twins born at 24 weeks survive and that number only gets better from here on out.
• Thursday, August 12 and we hit our goal of 36 weeks minimum.  From here on the twins could come at any time.
• Thursday, September 9 and we hit 40 weeks.  This is our due date even if we expect the twins to possibly come sooner.
• 4 Weeks Post Delivery – Look for baby smiles.
• Sometime After the Delivery – 4.5 months of the Twinsanity Interval.