16 weeks: Daddy is Officially Outnumbered!

This week's developments:

* The babies are about 4.5 in long and around 3.5 oz each (according to my ultrasound they were measuring ahead at 4 oz!) and the size of avocados

* Their legs are much more developed, heads are more erect, and eyes and ears are closer to their final positions

* Toenails have started to grow and the patterning of the scalp has begun

* Their hearts are now pumping 25 quarts each of blood per day

On Wednesday, we had our highly anticipated ultrasound in which they measured various points on the babies' bodies to assess development, and we got to peer between their tiny little legs to determine the sexes! Before we left in the morning, Brent said to the dogs, "don't worry boys, the only way we will be outnumbered is if there are three girls"- like THAT would never happen. The funny thing is that our very first predictions right after the IUI were that we would end up with all girls. I had prayed a lot throughout the 'trying to conceive' journey, and had asked God for a sign when we got pregnant- specifically that he would show me a balloon if I were pregnant and that it would be pink for a girl/blue for a boy. Through several months of failed cycles I did not see a SINGLE balloon anywhere. And believe me, I would scour the streets as I drove all over several counties for my home health job. I had shared this prayer with several people including my mother and husband. This cycle, however, within a couple days of the IUI, Brent, my Mom and I were riding bikes down a busy street by the ocean and all of a sudden, out from an alleyway,  shoots a single pink balloon right in front of my bike- bouncing across the pavement as it was blown by a breeze. I pedaled hard to reach my Mom who had gotten ahead of me while I had stopped to watch the balloon in awe, and exclaimed, "a pink balloon just bounced out into the street in front of me!" She knew exactly what I was talking about.  I was filled with hope that this cycle was going to result in pregnancy. Brent and I shared what had happened with his Mother who was coming to the beach to visit us. When they were leaving the hotel to head back to New York, she called to tell us that on their way out they had seen a car FILLED with pink and white balloons. Another sign? Maybe my womb is FILLED with baby girls? That had me convinced for quite awhile that we were having a girl, and after the first ultrasound- that we were having all girls! Over time, with a little wishful thinking and good 'ol statistics, we changed our minds and thought we were having a mixture. My cousin sent us this chart after finding out about the girls to illustrate the possibility of the different sex combinations with triplets:

As you can see, odds are much higher to have a combination of sexes with fraternal triplets. That being said, this ultrasound was not unlike our very first one when she saw not one, not two, but three heartbeats!  Instead this time she saw not one, not two, but three girls! To be completely honest, we did experience a few minutes of "are you kidding me?" all over again. What parent wouldn't hope for a combination with triplets when they have no other children, and will not plan to have anymore after this? But after that few minutes of initial shock, we were right back to being ecstatic that we still have 3 healthy babies in there, and could not be more excited to being having 3 beautiful girls. God's plan is perfect, and if he is giving us three girls, neither of us would change that for anything.
Needless to say, I had to spend the last few days going through all of the boy clothes I bought at the Just Between Friends Sale to determine which could be unisex (most can, thankfully) and re-working our Amazon.com  registry to reflect a lot more pink! Below are some shots of the girls' girl parts from the ultrasound (which are very hard to see uploaded on here-there is a small arrow in each image pointing between the legs):

Baby A

 Baby B

Baby C

This one wasn't labeled so not sure who it was:

Baby A's heart rate was 143 bpm, Baby B-140, and Baby C-120. My OB was not concerned over Baby C's HR, stating that it was within normal limits and was probably lower because she was not being as active as the other two this morning. Baby B had been kicking up a storm most of the time! All three were measuring in at 4 oz, which is perfect. From the abdominal ultrasound, they did not see any evidence of cervical funneling and it appeared longer than at the last ultrasound (4.06 cm- up from 3.28cm 3 weeks ago) so it seems that the bedrest has been helping that, at least. He measured my uterus for the first time and it already measures 7 weeks ahead- at 23 weeks- and is likely to just grow exponentially ahead of a singleton uterus from here on out! 

As many friends and family know, Brent and I have been discussing baby names since long before we got pregnant. We settled on first names for 2 girls and 2 boys after learning that we were having three since we knew that most likely we would have a combination.  After the appointment, we went out to lunch to celebrate. Pretty much the whole lunch Brent spent on his phone looking up baby names and tossing some out there with a lot of "No's" from me. You knew we were getting tired of discussing names when he started suggesting objects in the room and random items that popped into his head.  "Aquafina?" "No" "Lamp?" "No". We ended up keeping only one of the two girl names we had settled on originally, Michaela, and adding back in the first one we had ever loved but had strayed away from- Hayley- to the list of possibilities. Kennedy came up on the phone search and we thought that wasn't bad. I called my sister to see what she thought. Since she is expecting a little boy, she whipped through a list of girl names that they had considered. Of those, Reagan really stood out to us. It didn't take long to determine that we couldn't have a Reagan AND Kennedy, unless we wanted to name the third one Hoover or something. We decided of the two, Reagan was our favorite. Late into the night we pondered middle names. We really wanted to have a theme like Faith, Hope, and Joy, but after throwing around the many combinations, decided that Grace is also a wonderful virtue and sounds better with Reagan-at least to our ears. To make it officially official (since we had gone back and forth so many times in the past- we decided to 'kiss on it' and announce it on facebook). The funny thing is, it took us around 10 minutes to just agree on the wording of the facebook post to announce the names. It really makes you wonder how the two of us EVER agreed on 3 combinations of 6 names!

16 Week Picture:

I have heard many people are wondering how Bosley is doing. As you can see, he is doing great-completely back to his bouncy mischievous self. I removed his stitches last week and his ankle has healed up nicely- he doesn't pay it any mind at all :)