Week 11

It's been a pretty quiet week compared to the rest; Kyra has hardly been sick and we haven't been running to appointments. The Vitamin B6 continues to help Kyra's nausea, she's only been sick one or two times this week and since she's coming to the end of the first trimester hopefully it's gone for good. Kyra is often not hungry a lot, and continues to just eat several small meals per day to stave off the nausea, which seems to help in conjunction with the B6.

Both Kyra and I have started to think about these little guys/gals actually being born. We spent some time picking out three boy and three girl names, in the event they're all one sex. I'm really hoping for a little girl, Kyra remains impartial to either sex. Kyra's done a great deal of research on having multiples, including how to find clothes and things like baby baths for cheap. She got some used neutral clothes at a consignment store for $1.50 each, and they looked brand new. It sure beats paying full price!

Week 10 and Vitamin B6

I thought I would just write a short note to provide an update on Kyra's vomiting after she started the vitamin B6. She's been taking them twice a day every day now and is finding both her nausea and vomiting have decreased markedly. She would be nauseous most of the day and would vomiting with almost every meal, and how she's down to about once day. Over all, we're pretty happy with our $2 purchase from Walmart haa haa.

The Start of Week 10 and More Fun Pregnancy Sickness

Last night was the last progesterone injection for Kyra, which of courses she's happy about since both sides of her upper butt cheeks (gluteus maximus muscle) are visibly swollen from 10 weeks of this. Our clinic does 10 weeks of luteal support, a lot do 8, but research doesn't support one over the other; I guess there thinking is by week 10 the placenta is functioning enough to continue the pregnancy.

Kyra has been really sick this week, I think she's at a 1 for 3 average when it comes to keeping meals down. She's tried to wait until she's been up a while to have breakfast, that seems to have mixed results, other meals have been about as bland and as small as she wants with no improvement. She bought some vitamin B6 which is supposed to help with nausea and vomiting, I'm not sure if it's due to it's roll in carbohydrate and protein metabolism or if there's another action that causes it to help.

I continue to be nervous about genetic defects, which as the genetic counsellors told us, we have a 1.5% chance per fetus. That doesn't seem like a lot, but two days ago I transported a Trisomy 13 neonate which makes me worry since I see genetic defects like that on an almost weekly basis, one forgets there are babies born normally in this world. Trisomy 13 is a genetic disorder where the infant has 3 rather than 2 of the 13th chromosomes - they are severely mentally retarded, have scalp defects, cleft lip, extra digits, and organ or cardiac defects; they typically don't live long after birth. In my experience I've always seen the addition digits and cardiac defects.

We've been letting it slowly leak out that we're pregnant with triplets everyone is very excited about it, but I notice I do get a bit of a puzzled look. I've been explaining to people that yes, we did IVF, to me it doesn't carry a stigma, I guess to others it may.

As of today we're at 10 1/7 week... go babies go.

The Triplets Take a Ride to the High Risk OB

Today was our appointment and ultrasound at the high risk OB center. They first had us see the genetic counselling folks, which I guess is a pretty common practice, but not strickly due to maternal age or multiple gestations. It gave us some things to think about, but since I transport sick neonates, it made me feel like there was no hope of having 3 normal babies, something which has been on my mind since we started this process.

They also talked to us about reducing, but while we understand the risks to the whole pregnancy, we feel it better to just ride it out and run the gamble of delivering early. We may change our mind depending on what happens in the future.

The ultrasound was the highlight of the 3 hour appointment, they wanted to check the identicals to see they had their own placenta. Much to their surprise they did, which again gives us more options if we had to reduce and eliminates the possibility of twin to twin transfusions. They were moving around and just looked darn cute. We have to return to them for a nuchal translucency ultrasound on all babies which will help them predict genetic defects since several syndromes present with neck webbing.

Kyra has been doing really well with nausea/vomiting this week, although she did throw up her breakfast out of the blue this morning.

Above is zoomed in ultrasound picture of babies A and C, they're legs and arm buds are visible, I think they're cute little guys.

The Big News

Kyra and I went for our first ultrasound yesterday and received some very, very, very positive news, it showed not one, but three! Back on February 23, we had two 3 day embryos returned, one was a 7 and one was an 8 cell, both with 25% fragmentation (none is desirable). All fetuses appear heathy and dated appropriately at 9 and 1/7 week, all in their own gestational sacs. So I guess we now fit in to the 20% statistic from the fertility center of having multiples.

We have an appointment with the high risk OB/GYN in a few days, they're going to evaluate the identical set of twins to see if they share a placenta or have their own. Each twin having it's own placenta would just give us more options if he need to reduce, which we don't plan to do if everything goes fairly well.

Kyra continues to have mimimal nausea or vomiting, but a lot of reflux for which she's been taking Tums. She's also been getting up one to two times per night to urinate due to the fluid retention, I find it ironic since she always used to make fun of me for getting up during the night.

Above is a picture of the initial ultrasound showing the triplets. Since they're small their not well defined by you can make out the head of baby B and the body of baby A, I'm not really sure what baby C is doing.

End of Pregnancy Week 8

As we approach Thursday we come to the end of week 8. Kyra isn't morning sick, she's just randomly "day sick", with nausea and vomiting shortly after lunch in to the evening. Usually once she gets vomits she's done and feels better.

Our ultrasound is tomorrow, we'll find out how many viable fetuses are present of the two we had implanted. I use the word fetus since this week marks the end of the embroyonic period and start of the fetal period.