We went to the doctor’s office on Friday for our monthly checkup (which, starting on next month’s visit, will become a twice monthly visit) and all seemed well. One thing that I was concerned about was my weight gain (or lack there of). I have been keeping track of my weight on a little graph on the bathroom wall (where I mark my weight every Wed and Sat morning), and though I’ve gained about 15 pounds total, I hadn’t really gained more than 2 pounds in the last month. This was putting me further and further under the “recommended weight gain” line on my chart (of course, based on the average recommended pounds per trimester for twin pregnancies, I’d calculated the slope and plotted it on my little bathroom chart as a base line-nerdy, I know, but I’m ok with that – currently I’m about 6 pounds under. No big deal, right? Well…lately my mom has decided that I wasn’t gaining enough weight. I have to admit that I was a little worried too, since the babies are supposed to be gaining almost ½ pound each per week, and how can they be getting bigger if I’m not? I wasn’t as freaked out as her, but it was starting to make me wonder.
She read some where that the leading cause of twin deaths is underweight babies, so of course she’s determined to pack pounds on me. I think she figures that the more weight on my butt, the better chance the babies have. She’s started buying me 2 % milk (since I refused to switch from skim to whole) and brings me home donuts more and more often. She probably would be ecstatic if I started eating spoonfuls for butter for snacks.
Luckily, the doc doesn’t seem to think there is a problem at all. As far as he’s concerned, most of what I gain is genetically determined anyway and the babies are going to take what they need from my body whether I gain 100 pounds or 10. He said they’re still growing like they should be (though at the next visit we’ll have an official ultrasound to do growth measurements again).
Their little heartbeats were strong, and though it’s hard to see the whole of them now that they’re getting so big, each little body part we saw on the ultrasound looked good. No pictures unfortunately, but since we beg for them every time I thought it was ok to go without asking this once – plus I just forgot to ask. No big surprise there, since me memory has lately been getting worse and worse. (For those that didn’t know, since there are twins they do a mini ultrasound each visit since there is no other way to check both heartbeats and tell which is which – it’s usually a very brief glimpse).
We signed up for a taking care of multiples class through a hospital just north of the one we’re delivering at (ours doesn’t offer one for doubles but we’re taking the child birthing class there in a few weeks) - it’s a two day-er and we had the first 4 hour session yesterday. It’s taught by a doula, but she also specializes in multiples and (not sure if this is the doula side of her job or something else) works in people’s homes to help them out. She seems to have a ton of experience and I am already SUPER glad that we’re taking it. We covered things that I thought I totally had down (like diaper changing and swaddling) and turns out there are a lot of things I’ve yet to learn. I’m just glad that there are going to be fewer things I’ll have to learn through trial and error now! I’m not sure if Evan took as much from it as I did, or if I’ll remember all that I took away from it tomorrow (though I did take a TON of notes), but I am glad we’re doing it regardless.
Turns out I will be feeding babies (since we are going to try and breastfeed them) for 8-16 hours a day. That doesn’t count pumping, diapering or any of that. Holy milk cow! Today we’ll be covering breastfeeding techniques with two, and going over pumps and stuff like that. I know Evan can’t wait. ;)
Well, that’s about all I have for now…it’s off to the afternoon errands, then more class.
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