29 Weeks: Grow Babies Grow!

This Week's Developments:
* The girls should be weighing in at about 2 1/2 lbs (like butternut squash) and be a little over 15 inches long (see below for actual weights!)
* Muscles and lungs continue to mature
* Their little heads are growing larger to accommodate their developing brains

This week has been full of needle sticks! I had another round of rhogam since I am blood type O Negative as well as another 2 day round of steroid shots yesterday and today- ouch! My OB said we might as well do another round this week to be safe and that "it couldn't hurt anything." I said "yeah, except my butt!" (which is wear they stick it). He got a chuckle out of that.

Last night I had a bit of a scare. I began feeling my contractions more frequently so I requested to be hooked up to the contraction monitor and it turned out that I was having around 10 in an hour. The on call OB and Specialist were called and decided to have my cervix checked manually and wanted me to have a terbutaline injection to calm the contractions. My cervix, as expected, was still very thin, and had dilated to probably around 2 cm based on the nurse's manual assessment. Thankfully none of the babies appeared to be effected by the contractions at all based on their heart rate monitoring. My heart on the other hand was pumping out of my chest giving me some palpitations and HR ~140 bpm with shaky hands for awhile which are normal side effects. I find it amazing that a drug that is so stimulating also acts to calm my uterus so effectively!

My specialist is pleased with how far I have made it already and said that if I go into active labor again to where my contractions are frequent, painful, and causing increased dilation, they will not attempt to use drugs again to stop my contractions and will instead just take me in for the C section. She hopes that I will still make it another week or two before that happens (and would be especially pleased with getting to 32 weeks, but is doubtful I will make it that long). She is confident the babies will (most likely) be ultimately fine if they decide to make an earlier appearance, and my uterus, which is measuring 43+ weeks by now, is getting impatient! I still have a feeling that the girls will hang in there until the first few days of February. We can't believe how real this is getting!!

This morning I had my much anticipated growth scan. The last one was two weeks ago and none of us were impressed with the growth at that point from the scan three weeks prior to it. Today was a whole different story. All of the girls-even little C- gained exponentially from the previous scan, gaining much more in the past 2 weeks than they did in the previous 3! We are so proud of them! All of their amniotic fluid measurements are still in the normal range as well. Here Are the measurements:

Baby A: 2 lbs 6 oz (+9 oz from 2 weeks ago), AF: 3.77 cm

Baby B: 2 lbs 15 oz (+14 oz), AF: 5.63 cm

Baby C: 2 lbs 4 0z (+10 oz), AF: 3.9 cm

We continue to appreciate all of the amazing encouragement and prayers! The weight gains these past 2 weeks were a big answer to prayer and we hope that they keep up that trend and stick in there a few more weeks to hit that 32 week milestone! If not, though, we pray they will do exceptionally well no matter when they decide to come :)

Brent is off to a track meet, so I only have a picture from a few days ago that is not bare belly. You can compare this to my 25 week shot in which I am wearing the same shirt. Notice how much shorter it has gotten!

Total Weight Gain: ~51 lbs

Forgot to post a pic of my pedicure that Brent gave me this week. What a good hubby!