The Lovseth Ladies: 33 Weeks. Here we go again!

I'm happy to be taking this picture AND that I stayed awake through church!

We certainly don't get bored around here! My mom flew in on Monday morning to do some big time nesting for me. I can't believe we didn't take a picture while she was here! Lots of heavy cleaning and organizing got done along with errands and meals made for the freezer. There is not much left to do to be ready for these babies, which is turning out to be a good thing! That same night I started contracting closer together again. I really tried to wait it out and do all the things you are supposed to do to get them to stop, but no dice, so we had to go to the hospital. Once we got there, it took three nurses to get both babies on the monitors. Baby B really did not want to stay in the vicinity of her monitor. I had another negative fetal fibronectin test and a shot to stop contractions, which worked. Whew. The next day, mom and I were off to Iowa City to the U of I Hospital for my yearly parathyroid appointment. It was quick and easy and seems like I will be able to be done with those soon.

Friday was a regularly scheduled OB visit with ultrasound. Baby A had to be woken up during the ultrasound and didn't seem real happy about it! Baby B wiggled enough to satisfy the tech. Everything was still looking good and this time they measured both babies closer together just under the 50th percentile. The estimate is about 4 and a half pounds each.

Hopefully we can get another pound on them before they are born. Dr. P. sent me back into the hospital that day to get a shot of steroids which help the babies' lungs mature a bit faster as a safeguard since my belly is not sure it wants to hold these babies as long as we want it to. He said he would feel dumb if he didn't have me take it, but I could still have all these contractions and need to be induced at 37 weeks. It was a two part shot, so on Saturday, we took my mom to the airport to go home and collapse after all the work she did. Then it was right back to the hospital for monitoring and the second half of the shot. Both times the girls were monitored, they scored a 10 out of 10! Gold stars all around!

Wouldn't you know it? We were back at the hospital today. I woke at 2 am with contractions and timed them for 3 hours, drank more water than I thought possible, and watched I Love Lucy reruns on my left side. By 5 am, they still had not slowed down much, so I called in and told them what was going on. They said, "You've done everything we would have told you to try so see you in a bit!" When we got there, it was baby B giving the one of the same nurses a hard time getting on the monitor! The contractions also finally eased up and we got to leave in an hour without tests or shots! Yay! So we joined the 2 other people who were at Perkins for breakfast at 6:30 am on a Sunday morning. Hopefully next week will not involve so many trips to the hospital, but time will tell. They gave me different guidelines to call in for since I am not following the normal patterns of preterm labor due to the the fact that it's twins and my belly is the size of a full term person. Hopefully that helps us be able to stay away from the hospital, but it is nice to hear their heartbeats and feel them kicking and punching at their monitors!

Here are a few pictures of new things in the girls' room: