Weekly ultrasound report...from the couch :)

Hi again! I am now 21 weeks, 4 days pregnant, yeah :) We had our weekly ultrasound this morning. Tom really looks forward to this, haha. He made a sarcastic comment that "maybe we will get to have another ultrasound today" so I shared this with the nurse while Tom was parking the van. She laughed, and as she went out the door, Tom was coming in. She told him that he got to sit through another ultrasound today and giggled. Ok, this may not sound very funny, but at this point we have lost track of how many we have had and though Tom is tired of sitting in the doctor's office for 2 hours every time, he still goes in case something new is discovered. His sarcasm is part of his charm :) At the right time of course :) We have to find humor somewhere in all this roller coaster of a pregnancy!

Enough with the dribble and on to the info! Babies are moving alot and I am really feeling them now :) Baby B even had the hiccups today. They did the usual dopplers on the main veins they are watching and all looks good. Each of their hearts still have a leaky valve, but Dr. Walker explained a little better what exactly is happening. He isn't too worried at this point that it will continue to be a problem or even if is a problem at all. He said this is typical behavior of the former recipient twin (baby B), which I think I explained before :) And, of course in my case, both babies are showing this in the same valve. The new thing we learned about this is that it could all go away once they are born. The upper valve connects the upper and lower sections of the heart and is affected by the lungs. Since babies in utero have collapsed lungs, they do not put pressure on the heart. Once a baby takes it's first breath, the lungs fill with air and apply pressure to the heart. This forces the small amount of pooled blood out and the valves then seal off. He said a cardiologist would probably not be too worried about this either and would just want to watch them closely after they were born to see how it might resolve. The important thing right now is that they both have normal blood flow running through the center of their hearts and blood is pumping normally through their systems.

It has been 10 days since I lost any fluid (I sound like someone at AA, haha, the pocket looks significantly smaller than it has, and the hemotoma (blood clot) is almost completely gone. Fluid levels for Baby A look great, but Baby B looks a little diminished. Dr. Walker feels that maybe Baby B ended up with less share in the placenta after the laser surgery, and though she has been the bigger twin up to this point, may not grow as quickly or as large as Baby A. Baby B's bladder is still visible, which we have learned is very important, so she is still producing fluid. Her sack is the one with the leak, so it is possible that I may still be losing small amounts of fluid that is un-noticeable. Though her fluid is low, since she is a twin, she still has lots of room to move, providing joint and lung development, because of Baby A's sack cushioning her.

Dr. Walker told us it was pretty amazing that we have made it this far and all looks pretty good, especially where we are as opposed to where we were even 4 weeks ago :) He said he was fairly confident that we will have a positive outcome and as long as the babies are growing and developing as they are, we will be in good shape. And if all is still going well, the longest we will probably go is 34 weeks...according to Dr. Walker, "When enough is enough :) We don't want to tempt fate any longer than we have too". :)

So, until next week...I will be here on my couch :)