29 Weeks & Growing

Well, these pictures are actually from her 25th week. Yes, I'm a little delayed in getting them posted here. But they were posted on Brandi's Facebook page the night we took them, if that counts for anything.

And here's some actual late-breaking news:

After spending two nights in the hospital for pain and a minor bladder infection, Brandi came home Tuesday afternoon. Then Tuesday night she stayed up sick all night. She finally felt better for her doctor's appointment yesterday, which included a blood-sugar test. The news today? The test was positive, and now we get to go in Monday for a four-hour sugar test to see if she has gestational diabetes.

This poor girl can't catch a break. At least we got some good news during her hospital stay: they did a test for premature labor, and it came back negative. That means she's in good shape for at least two weeks.

If she makes it to 37 weeks, which would be the end of April, the twins will be considered full term. I think we'll schedule a c-section sometime during the 37th week if we haven't had to go in before then. I know Brandi's ready. The doctor says she's already the size of a woman with a single pregnancy at 9 months. Brandi just gets to enjoy the 9-month aches and pains for another 7-8 weeks.

Since I don't want to end this post on a low note, I'll also report that Brandi's first baby shower, thrown by Sommer in Dallas with their sorority sisters, was a great success. She came back with lots of goodies, and she had a terrific time seeing all her old friends. Plus, while she was out, her dad and uncle came to the house, and we got new flooring installed in the nursery.

21 Weeks Worth of Belly

The belly pictures are finally here. I hadn't taken any like these until now primarily because I wanted a more dramatic reveal. However, now that we're beyond the halfway mark, I thought I better get some images of Brandi posted before the babies arrive.

These were actually taken last week. That puts us somewhere around 22-23 weeks at the moment. Brandi has her first visit with the perinatologist next week, and I think we'll be scheduling weekly appointments with one doctor or another from here on out.

I've still got some more sonogram images to post, but they're from a few weeks back. I'll get around to those a little later this week. For now, enjoy these belly pics, and send us a message if you have any name suggestions (see last post).

It's a Boy! And Another Boy!

Yeah, that's right. Both boys. We're both excited, but more for the simple fact that now we know than because we were hoping for them to be one gender over another.

The idea of having both a boy and a girl had crossed our minds. It would have been a quick, neat route to a well-rounded family: both a son and a daughter while only having to endure the trials of a single pregnancy. But now we're excited by the possibility that they could turn out to be identical. I guess we'll continually find new things to get excited about.

This means we can start on the nursery now. And start picking out clothes and toys and accessories. And names! For a month now, we've been working off the assumption (based on the slightly-too-early assessment of a well-meaning sonogram tech) that one of them was a girl. So all the names we've been considering were female. Now we have to start over from scratch with names for boys. And we have to come up with first and middle names for two. Four names in all, and they all need to sound good together.

We only know that we don't want anything matchy-matchy: no same first letters and no rhyming pairs. But they can't be too different either. I can't really see calling out, "Keegan! Bob! Come here!" We're considering Irish names, since both our families have roots in Ireland. Brandi's grandfather was a first-generation Irish immigrant. My grandfather was Irish and Native American (there's more to it than that, but those are the two that always stuck out to me). But we're also considering names with Swedish, Germanic, and English origins.

Actually, I've even jokingly considered selling their names on eBay for their first year. I'm just now sure how well that would go over. I would really be disappointed (and certainly ridiculed) if we only got $500 to name them Doctor Stupido and Captain Buttwipe. I'm not sure how many bids we would get if we put too many stipulations on the deal.

Anyway, we'd be happy to hear suggestions from any of our friends and family that are keeping up with this. I'll be posting some other pictures later this week, and I hope to have an update with some of the names we're tossing around. The ultrasound images in this post are the most recent. There's even a 3D image here somewhere. The next post will include some images from earlier ultrasounds that I never got around to scanning until this weekend. And I also have some maternity pictures of Brandi, in case anyone has been dying to see belly-photos. But I'll save those for later, too. That gives me incentive to not wait so long between posts.

Slowly But Surely

Gradual improvements keep coming. Brandi is off the IV now, so she's no longer receiving round-the-clock Phenegran. She can still get shots of it, along with Zofran (also for nausea) and Stadol (one of very few allowed pain meds), but only every 6-8 hours.

The Dr. said those would be the next to go. He's hoping to transition her to tablets in the next day or two - something she can take at home.

She seems to be able to rest a little more each day. I'm sure she will enjoy getting to sleep through the night when she gets released. I know I will.

The pictures today are actually from a couple of days ago, but I hadn't created this blog then, so I can post them a few days late without guilt. I'm planning on creating an album of images to tell the story of the whole pregnancy. Hopefully, that means I'll have plenty of pics to post here as we move along.

With plans to record the different stages of this journey, I don't imagine I'll be taking pictures every day just yet. There are only so many things to see in the same hospital room through the course of a week. The frequency may increase a little once we get back home.

Although it may go without saying, we welcome comments on these posts from friends, family, and even complete strangers. We truly appreciate all the support and encouragement we continue to receive. I hope this blog can serve to express our gratitude and excitement to all those interested in keeping up with our progress along this path.

Yes ... Twins!

It's official. We are expecting. And with twins, I'm expecting to be broke, exhausted, and frazzled for the foreseeable future. But everyone tells me it's all worth it.

If you're here, reading this, I'll assume you already know us, and I'll skip any tedious introductions or explanations. Suffice it to say that we (Brandi & Josef) have, in our fifth year of marriage, stunned our friends and families with the news that we'll be parents by next summer.

We found out Brandi was pregnant two and a half weeks ago. Brandi's first official doctor appointment was last Wednesday. Then, last Thursday, she went from just being pregnant to being violently, miserably pregnant.

Not wanting to risk dehydration, her doctor called in orders to have her admitted to the hospital. She has been in the hospital for a week now with extreme morning sickness, and she hasn't been able to maintain a regular diet without constant nausea medication. According to the doctor, though, this isn't anything to get too upset about at this point. He's had other patients who stayed in the hospital like this for up to three weeks, and in the worst cases they had to receive their food through feeding tubes. Since she's nowhere near that point, we're in relatively good shape for now.

They say it's the hormones from the babies that cause morning sickness, and with twins Brandi is getting double the dose. She seems to be getting a little better every day, so hopefully she will be able to get home soon.

I'll be posting pictures here as things progress. I think it's only appropriate that the first images be of the ultrasound that showed us we had twins on our hands. We only found out this little detail this past Sunday, so we're still trying to wrap our brains around it.

These pictures aren't the best, since I've only been able to photograph the printouts on the countertop here in the hospital. I'm planning on scanning them later, and if that actually happens, I'll post the scans here as well.