Friday, December 16, 2011

Graduation Day!

It's it weird that I was sad after our last visit at the RE today? I had to fight back tears when the doctor and nurses were hugging me. To them I know this is a medical disaster, lol, but for me I am very thankful. Even though this is no where near what we planned for or even thought was a real possibility, I will take 4 babies over no babies any day! Dr. Williams really is amazing, and so are his nurses. Even the receptionist was awesome! Defintely a bittersweet day!

All 4 babies are still doing great! They were extremely active and moving everywhere, and one was hanging upside down the whole time. All heart beats were great and they were all measuring correctly. Our Baby D always measures a few days behind the other 3, but it has been that way the entire time.  This is the best shot we got from today.

  And finally a belly pic. I look rundown and awful but I guess that is how I am going to look from here on out so it's okay.  ;) I strangely look a lot larger in person, or maybe that is just my perception of myself, who knows. This pic was taken today at 10 weeks 4 days.

I feel like all the weight I have gained has gone straight to my face and arms! Well, I guess maybe other places too since my pants don't fit, I just really notice it most in my upper body. I have been doing pretty good on the weight gain, I have put on 12 pounds so far. It's only a little over half of what they wanted me to put on by now, but I have been eating anything and everything, and it's just all that has packed on. The nutritionist told me 70-80 pounds, and my doctor said close to 100 pounds, so my goal is to make it to 80 pounds. I think I can do it!

Lastly, I would like to say thanks to all of the quad moms that have reached out to me over the past couple of days. I feel SO much better after talking with a few of you, and I am so happy that I have somewhere to turn when I have questions! Talking with you guys and reading your stories/blogs is really helping me through right now!

Monday, December 12, 2011

Finally pregnant!!! With 4!?!?!

We have decided to start blogging in hopes of meeting other quad momma's, or any other multiple moms for that matter! Plus we know we have a few people that want to keep updated on the pregnancy. Here is the back story on this pregnancy so far! I am 10 weeks pregnant today.

October 26, 2011- One of the most amazing days ever! I FINALLY saw those two beautiful pink lines, and even better, the word PREGNANT on a digital test. Our 2 year old daughter Ella would finally be a big sister! My husband and I were both ecstatic, and could not stop crying happy tears. I don't think I would have been able to handle another failed attempt with our fertility treatments, so it could not have came at a better time. I was only 9DPO, so I still had 5 days left before my beta. My first beta was 379- on the higher end but nothing that screamed "there's quadruplets in there!!!!", and they doubled appropriately. I know beta's are extremely variable, but I thought MAYBE we were looking at twins. HA!

November 8, 2011- Our first ultrasound at 5 weeks 1 day. Oh man if there could have been a video camera in that room! So we start the ultrasound, and I immediately see 3 tiny circles. In reality I knew what they were, but I kind of just looked away thinking maybe he was looking at one of my ovaries and they were cysts.... Yeah no. The doc says "I see 3 sac's". I just look over at Larry, and we just kind of laughed. I was thinking "triplets.... okay we can do this, it's going to be okay". So the doc measured all of the sac's and was doing his thing. A couple minutes later he gets an awful look on his face, and I ask him what was wrong. He told us that he thinks he sees 4. "ARE YOU SERIOUS?!?" He wasn't sure at first, but yup, there were 4. After that I do not remember much... I think I kind of blacked out a bit, my memory is a little fuzzy. I remember a little laughing, a little crying, I may have even said an inappropriate word.... Lol It was crazy to say the least! Larry took the news better than I did. I immediately started worrying about the health issues for these babies (a curse of being a nurse), and of course I felt so guilty wondering how our daughter was going to handle this. We were all just amazed at how this happened. I mean we obviously know how it happened, but for those who know fertility talk- we had one mature follicle at trigger (almost 16mm), an E2 level of only 221 (indicating only 1 mature egg), and we had several smaller follicles, but none were bigger than 13.4mm. For those who don't know fertility talk- it means I was supposed to only have one mature egg, and they generally do not consider an egg mature enough to be fertilized until the follicle reaches at least 15mm.

All of our following ultrasounds have indicated normal, healthy growing babies! It took me a couple of weeks to come around to the idea of having 4, just because I was so scared of all the risks for the babies.  Of course I am still extremely nervous about getting them all here, and getting them all here at a decent gestational age, but you kind of can't help but be excited when you think of 4 bubbly cute babies. But we know it is going to be an extremely long road with an extremely complicated pregnancy... and we know that we may very well not end up with 4 healthy babies. But reduction is not an option for our family. We feel as though God put these babies into our lives for a reason, and it is not our decision to change that. Although this is going to be a long and hard road, and I still have days where I struggle with the reality of it, it really is one of God's miracles, and He chose us. That in itself is pretty amazing!  :)