Tuesday, December 14, 2010

24 weeks: These babies could live outside of me! (Scary thought.)

I absolutely don't want my babies coming out for at least another 11 weeks, but I am so thankful for hitting the 24 week mark yesterday - my sweet babies could live outside of me!

Next goal: 3 lb. babies (about 27-28 weeks)!

Names
We are pretty sure on one name and trying to toss around a few options for the second name in our heads. The problem is that Name #1 has a shorter version (nickname) that we will probably always call that baby by, and we want Name #2 to have the same thing... But we can't agree on any nicknames that we both love! Not sharing the names yet, but here's an example: if we were going to name Baby #1 Nicholas, and always call him Nick, I feel like we can't name the other one Carter unless we were to always call him Cart (not just in passing), which is unacceptable to me. (Like the BSB reference there? Heh.) I'm not going to sign a card "Love, Jonathan, Abbie, Nick and Cart." So that is my conundrum. Is this not a problem? If you think I am being crazy and it would be fine to have a Nicholas who we always called Nick and a Carter who we always called Carter, please feel free to let me know in the comments. I guess I would feel like this was not a big deal for siblings, but with twins, I feel like their names should at least sort of go together (even though we are not rhyming them or starting with the same letter).

Weight gain
31 lbs. down, 19+ to go! I have finally caught up with the chart from Dr. Luke's book for recommended weight gain for underweight twin moms. And I am right on schedule, since she likes to see a majority of weight gained toward the front end of pregnancy (I think she said by 24 weeks). Go me!

Pre-Term Labor
Well, I have finally hit a point where I absolutely cannot push myself too far. If I am dehydrated at all (and we're talking less than 8-sixteen ounce glasses of water every day!), haven't eaten enough, go up the stairs too quickly or too frequently, do too much during the course of a day, etc., I get a contraction. Up until this point, God has been gracious to me in my slow learning and I haven't actually had more than one an hour (four an hour for two hours straight is considered pre-term labor). They usually frighten me enough to get me to down a huge glass of water and lay down. At least I know what they feel like now (because before I was worried that I wouldn't recognize a contraction when it came) and can watch for them. But my goal is to not have any triggered contractions (of course pregnant women will always get Braxton Hicks ones that you just can't prevent, but these also shouldn't trigger PTL) over the next week (and, of course, until I'm full term - but I'm taking it one week at a time here). This week is particularly rough for me because we are MOVING and I want to DO things. But although yesterday was quite productive, yesterday night proved that I did WAAAAY too much. So I'm off my feet today and I will be glued to the couch the rest of this week!

Gestational Diabetes
I passed my Glucose Tolerance Test - woohoo! Sadly, they are going to make me retake it around 28-30 weeks, since apparently the results can change.

Car
Fixed! Our friend gave us the name of his mechanic who fixed our $400 problem for only $60. HOORAY!

10 comments:

Crysi said...

Watch out for supposed Braxton hicks. I thought I was having them with the twins at 31w because it was just a tightening & no pain. Wrong! I went to l&d because they weren't going away & it had been 3hrs. I was almost 5cm! They gave me fluids & nifedipine & the first of the nasty steroid shots. We figured this was it. My goal was to keep them in long enough for the steroids to work. 2w hospital bedrest & then we evicted them at 36w5d.

Take it easy! I moved when I was pg with Adia & wasn't allowed to touch a thing. I could just point at where I wanted stuff. Super hard when you're in nesting mode too.

Glad you passed the GTT. My dr did mine at 29/30w & I failed. Also glad you've got your weight gain up there. It's tough towards the end because there's no room to eat.

aboveallshadows said...

You should feel very very proud of yourself if you manage to sit back and let others do the moving for you. We moved twice when I was pregnant with Norah (across country around 22 weeks, across DC around 30) and I'm sure I did everything I wasn't supposed to do. Yet God graciously kept Norah inside me until she was 38 weeks!

If you're looking for someone to solve your name conundrum, don't look to me. I'm with you all the way. Except I totally would take it a step further - I'd like my kids' names AND nicknames to be the same number of syllables. Ideally, the same number of letters. I can't have two names that begin with the same letter (not even middle name letter duplicates), but I really like name symmetry, like all OT Hebrew names, or all literary names, or all presidents (get it? Reagan? and I have a sister named Madison). All this to say: I feel ya. But I'm sure it will all work out eventually.

Shaina N said...

*hugs* I am SO happy for you!

Yay for weight gain and for viability. Stay in inside boys! Hang out with Momma for as long as possible!

I completely understand where you're coming from with names. Keevia is already bothering me because she has about 5 nicknames, and none of them are set, lol!!! I didn't start off calling her Keevie or Keevia, so now different people call her different things! But I totally understand having like Jacob and Robert and calling them Jake and Rob... but I wouldn't have a Rob and an Isaac. That would be weird. I agree. You're not crazy. :)

P.S. LOVED the BSB mention!

aboveallshadows said...

Maybe you could get creative! Like with the Robert/Isaac example (thanks Shaina N): Rob& Zac

...just ignore me if I ramble. I just love ruminating over names. I should find a way to get paid for it.

JReus said...

YAY!!!! also bill and i were thinking of names for your babies and we thought of joshua and caleb. but not jacob and esau.
just sayin'.
also i think its ok if you use a nickname for one and the full name of the other (e.g. chris and karen-- my twin siblings!)

Kim Neyer said...

I don't think both need a matching nickname. My full name is Kimberly and my sister's name is Kelly. We were always Kim and Kelly. Kelly never cared that she didn't have a shortened name. I was never called Kimberly anyway, lol. It still doesn't even feel like "my name." I'm Kim even though my legal name is Kimberly. Food for thought! :)

nonapearl said...

Have twin friends named Samuel and Daniel. Only prob is that when we shortened the names we always said "Sam" and "Damn". So I'd be careful about that! :)

So excited for you.

ottspot said...

My boys are Will and Sawyer. Will is really William of course, but we always call him Will. Sawyer gets called Soy or Soy-Soy around the house but our Christmas cards always say Will and Sawyer. And of course we had Mollie and Megan where Megan was Meg but Mollie wasn't usually Mol. So it can work either way - just choose what you like best!

Hamesy said...

We *almost* named Alex Nicholas-- it was my #2 choice, actually! Great minds think alike!

I like the name/nickname combo of Alexander/Alex/Xan/Xander as much as I like the Nicholas/Nick/Cole combo. I just ended up loving the meaning of Alexander Prescott (defender of the people/ of the priest's cottage) so much that, in the end, it was my ultimate choice for his name.

I think you can mix the number of syllables in the boys' names/nicknames and be ok. Alaina is usually called by her 3 syllable full name, while we usually call Alexander by his 2 syllable nickname, Alex, (because that is what Alaina has done since he was born).

Come to think of it, we usually call Alaina by her silly nickname, Magoo, and Alex by his silly nickname, Goober, so maybe we'll all end up calling your boys Booboo and Pookie, or something else as silly and as equally non-derivative of their actual names!

Candace said...

That was one of the reasons that we picked our son's name, we liked the shorter version. His name is Jackson, and we call him Jack all the time. Well... except for his sister, she calls him Jack-Jack! :)

Also... LOVE the BSB mention! :) I am going to be seeing them in concert this summer, so it was not lost on me! :)