28 Weeks: Into the 3rd Trimester

This Week's Developments
* A singleton baby should weigh around 2.25 lbs and measure 14.8 in long by now
* The girls are blinking their eyes which sport eyelashes and may be able to see light that filters through my womb
* Neurons continue to develop in their brains at a fast rate

So I spoke with my specialist about last week's ultrasound on Monday. My main questions were what were her thoughts on their sizes, at what point would they consider taking them out if one was too growth restricted, when would we start doing longer heart rate monitoring sessions, when my next ultrasound would be, and would we be doing more steroids. When her elderly partner came to see me the day after the ultrasound, he had not even reviewed my ultrasound or known about it, and after I told him he could find it in my chart, his answers to all of my very specific questions were "uh, we are just going to keep doing what we are doing...we are just going to keep them in there until 34 weeks." He also forgets who I am every time he sees me and reintroduces himself. Honestly, how many triplet moms do you have staying in the hospital? I know for a fact I am the only triplet mom in their practice right now.

So when I called my specialist Monday with my questions, she answered them in much more depth after stating "So, I hear you don't like talking to Dr. X." I kind of brushed off her comment as I didn't want to talk negatively to her about her partner. She always puts things bluntly, and that might offend some people, but I can look past it and almost appreciate it since she is so amazing at her job. So when she looked at the babies' weights, especially C, she said "yeah they are puny." She said as long as they are growing some, we will leave them in there, and if they become too growth restricted, she would not consider taking them out until 30 weeks at the earliest. She said that my next growth scan would be 2 weeks after the last one (next Friday at 29 weeks, 1 day), and that we would be increasing the heart rate monitoring of the babies from a couple minutes twice a day to 20 minutes twice today. She also said around 29 weeks I will get another round of steroids. The longer heart monitoring will allow the doctors to see trends, establish a baseline heart rate for each baby, and check for the presence of heart rate accelerations concurrent with movement that are good. So far all three babies have shown some evidence of these accelerations, and they should demonstrate more as they get further along. I also got another rhogam shot this week.

Here is a picture of my belly with three heart monitors and a contraction monitor hooked up to it. These girls don't make it easy to get 20 consecutive minutes of monitoring with all their kicking and moving around!!



The bane of my week has been my clogged left ear. Lying down to shower has caused my ears to fill up with water each time and get deep into my ear canals and there is not much I can do to get it out. After last Friday's shower when my left ear was still clogged, I had Brent bring me earplugs for future showers but my ear got worse every day following to where it felt like I had a permanent ear plug in my ear and was absolutely miserable. I was finally seen by an ENT today who was able to unclog it for the most part using twirled up tissues and the blunt in of a cotton swab with some tissue paper on it. Hallelujah!

I have had several visitors this week. My friend Lauren works on the 4th floor here so stops by before work sometimes and came over to watch the premiere of the Bachelor on Monday with some homemade cookies, delicious! My friend Brittany was also able to stop by on Saturday since she was home for the weekend from Texas and it is always a treat to see her! I also was visited by my head pastor who is so kind and wonderful to talk to and who reminds me of my father. I told him that and about my Dad and he hopes to meet him when my parents are in town! My friend from work, Lee, also came to visit with loads of chocolate candy bars, yum :) As I am writing this blog, I was just visited by a man with two large hand puppets who delivered a special heartfelt message to the girls from a best friend from home, Betina. It just made my day! Thanks everyone!

A bit of a funny story...Brent and I had been squeezed onto my bed playing a game on the ipad and I had gotten up to go to the bathroom. At the time, the room phone was closer to the little couch and I needed to order dinner, so I laid down on the couch to make my order before going back to the bed. The OT walked in right about then and did a double take when she saw a man lying in the patient bed of the Perinatal ICU and the pregnant lady squeezed onto the small couch. "That's not something we see every day!" she exclaimed and we all started laughing. I assured her that my husband hadn't kicked me out of my own bed and that I was on my way back after I couldn't convince her that he was the pregnant one :)

Here are some 28 weeks shots:






Total Weight Gain: ~46 lbs