14 weeks

Alright, I'm officially in the second trimester!  Feeling pretty good, fatigue is much better and food aversions have subsided for the most part.  Otherwise nothing really to update.  I'm still in this awkward not looking pregnant but definitely feeling extra chubby so I bought a belly band at the Mall of America the other day.  Basically it looks like an extra tiny tube top (my first purchase of anything remotely resembling a tube top!) that slides on over one's waist are to allow for regular pants to be worn unbuttoned but still covered.  I'd rather not walk around with my pants unzipped, regardless of how appealing it is.  But the belly band works pretty well to hold them up, still sort of awkward to have on, maybe I just have to get used to relying on a piece of spandex to keep my jeans up.  On a related note....why aren't yoga pants acceptable attire to wear wherever and whenever I want?  Sigh....

I also finally figured out how to get photos off my phone and onto the computer without having to go through uploading them to Facebook first.  No laughing, I'm still adjusting to having a fancy smartphone.  My goal is to keep photos and such off Facebook to avoid spamming others feeds with baby stuff, so we'll just keep it on the blog. 

Ok so here's the ultrasound photo from our 6 week and 2 day scan.  This was the first scan that told us that we were having twins! 

And this photo was from my ultrasound done at 11 weeks and 5 days.  So cool to see how much they already looked like little people and see them moving around.  Kind of hard to see both but one is sort of laying on top of the other. 

Lastly, the above 2 photos were taken last week (a week ago today) at 13 weeks 1 day.  Amazing how different they look already right?  Their little faces look a little like aliens....but adorable little aliens! :0)

Next appointment May 6th and assuming they'll be another ultrasound that day.  In case I didn't already mention it, the twins are definitely identical as they are sharing a placenta, but each baby has their own amniotic sac (or bag of water).  Sharing a placenta is higher risk because our twins are at risk for Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome or TTTS.  TTTS causes unequal blood flow to each baby causing one baby to receive too much blood and the other baby doesn't receive enough.  This is bad for both babies as the baby receiving the blood is at risk for heart failure and the twin not receiving enough blood isn't receiving enough nutrients for proper growth.  I'm hoping and praying that this doesn't happen but we'll likely have many more ultrasounds in the future to make sure they're both growing at adequate rates.  At the last ultrasound a week ago Baby A was measuring about 5 days or so ahead of Baby B, so some growth discrepancy is common but starting at about 16 weeks we're anticipating bi-weekly ultrasounds to monitor their growth closely and make sure they're sharing things equally in there ;0)

~Lisette