OMG, I have gone almost two months without posting. I'm pretty sure this is a whole new level of  "disappearing".

I'm going to admit, I have no drive to blog these days. It's horrible and I wish I was better but so many more things come before my blog right now. Any yes, I'm talking about these two monkeys...

I can not even begin to wrap my mind around the idea of having two girls! We are sooooooooooooo stinking excited and thrilled to be finishing our family with two miracle little girls.

Today was my 34 week appointment and more than likely my last ultrasound. Everything went amazingly well and I even got a 4d peak at baby Holden. He appears to look a lot like Mr. London and has a head full of hair. Which if the old wives tale is correct, would explain why I have had so much heartburn this pregnancy. London had very little hair when he was born and I only experienced heartburn with him twice my entire pregnancy.

Here are a few pictures of the little guy. He really didn't cooperate well with the picture taking portion of the 4d ultrasound. He kept his hand up over his face for most of it but I caught a couple peaks at his cute little lips and nose. Oh and there is NO DOUBT that he is a boy, he was quite proud of showing that off. Typical man. :)



A few other things I learned at this appointment.

-I've not made anymore progress since 24 weeks, still hanging out around 1-3 cm dilated depending on which Dr checks me.
-Holden has not "dropped yet" although my suspects that when he does I will probably go into labor pretty quickly afterwards, if not immediately (based on my cervix).
- Holden is already weighing in at a healthy and chubby 6lbs.
-He is also head down (which I pretty much knew) so as of right now it looks like I won't be needing that much feared c-section.
-Next week I get to come off all my medications and restrictions! WOOHOOO!!

So now.... ON TO THE GIVEAWAY!


I've decided to do a little guessing game for my readers. I'm 34 weeks today, so lets take some guesses on when baby Holden will actually make his arrival. I'm giving away a $10 Amazon Gift Card to the person who comes closest. Below is a Rafflecopter giveaway form with 3 questions. Guess the date he will arrive, his weight, and then the time he will be born. The giveaway winner will be determined by whoever is CLOSEST to his actual birth date, and then I will be using his weight and time as a tie breaker in case we have multiple correct guesses. :)

A few things you may want to know before guessing...

-My actual due date is November 9, 2011.
-London was born at 37w4d (17 days early) at 3:17am and weighed 6lbs13oz (water broke spontaneously)
-I will be stopping all medications to prevent preterm labor next week (First week of October)
-Holden is currently estimated (via ultrasound) to weigh 6lbs (34 weeks)
-I weighed a whopping 10lbs9oz when I was born and Mike weighed 5lbs when he was born.

Go start guessing!

Anyone who guesses that I will go past 40 weeks will be automatically disqualified. HAHA! Just Kidding!


If you have any trouble with entering via the Rafflecopter form below, just leave your guess in a comment and I will add you manually. Please make sure to leave me an email address so I can contact you :)

Well I was wrong and so were most of you according to the poll on my sidebar.

EEEKKK!!! I am so happy! The heartbeat was a perfect 138 beats per minute and he/she was measuring one day ahead. Due Date: November 09, 2011!!!

Now, since I won't have to show this post to my future twins, I can tell all of you a little secret that I have been holding in the past few weeks.

I AM SO FREAKING RELIEVED TO BE HAVING ONLY ONE BABY!!

I'm sure having twins (or more) is magical and everyone who has them loves them and wouldn't trade them for the world. However I am so glad that we get to have only one baby this time. I mentioned how petrified I was about having multiples before we started IVF but I've been very cautious to bite my tongue since getting our BFP. What's the old saying, "Beggars can't be choosers".Well that is exactly how I felt. Who am I, Infertile Aly, to say I don't want two babies (right now). Just take what you are blessed to be given and be happy.

Today at the ultrasound when the Dr said we have just one, I sat straight up and cheered. Omg, I was so excited! The idea of twins with a two year old was so overwhelming to me.  After my high risk pregnancy last time and going into preterm labor at 24 weeks, I can't imagine how hard things would have been with two babies in there. My body has proven that it can produce one healthy baby, why push it?

I had a million worries running through my head over the last few weeks. Some of them were silly but some were justified.

First up was, We also only want 3 children, so if it was twins this time that would have been it. I just wasn't ready for this to be my last pregnancy. This was a selfish worry, yes but still one of my worries.

Secondly, We already have all the baby stuff for one, with the exception of some pink stuff if it turns out to be a girl. Buying doubles would have been fun, but expensive. This was very silly of me, we are fortunate enough to be able to afford all of these things, yet I still worried about it.

 Thirdly, I also am confident that I will be able to breastfeed one again, which is something that would have been more challenging with twins. A challenge that I was worried I wouldn't be able to handle. I am only 7 weeks pregnant and already worried about the mommy guilt associated with not being able breastfeed hahaha!

I just feel like once we reach that magical threshold marking the end of the first trimester, I will be able breath a small sigh of relief and actually start to enjoy this pregnancy with out all of the added what-if's that come with pregnancy and life with multiples.

Please don't get me wrong, having multiples is an amazing miracle. One that I was very excited about when we found out we were pregnant with twins last pregnancy. Well God will never give you more than you can handle, and he has once again proven how well he knows me.

In other news, my RE released me to a regular OB today!! I called and made my first OB appointment for April 6th at 1pm. We will have another ultrasound then at exactly 9 weeks . :)

So Mike and I had a brief visit to the hospital last night. I was having contractions every 8 mins or so for about 2 hours, so we decided to go get checked out. THANKFULLY they sent me home and did not keep me. I was told to drink LOTS of water, lay on my side, and they upped my meds. Well I had to go in the the Dr today for a follow up appt and I got an ultrasound to check his fluid and my cervical length. Well my cervix is short 2cm when it should be 4, but his fluid is GREAT so he has plenty of room to swim haha. So again my Dr told us that it looks like London really will be making his appearance early (as if we had any doubt). At the ultrasound he looked great! He weighs 3.5 lbs now, which is in the 94th percentile of weight for his age. So he is a BIG boy!! With my luck, he will come at 35 weeks and STILL weigh 9lbs HAHAHA. As usual during the ultrasound he refused to give us a decent profile picture. He was very quick to whip out the weenie though. I might just be giving birth to a future streaker or "naked man" for all you WPer's. He likes to show off the goods, but not so much his face. We got one pic of his profile but it's blurry because he was moving, so not all the lines on his face are defined. When you look at it, you can't see the indention between his nose and top lip. It almost looks like he has a muzzle, so Mike became very concerned that he looks like a monkey. He was quite relieved when I pointed out that his nose and lips WERE INDEED separate.

Well we had our 20 week ultrasound/check-up and everything looked GREAT!!! The good news is he is still a boy (phew!)! The bad news is...he is stubborn like me. He was acting crazy during the ultrasound. He wouldn't sit still for measurements and regardless how many time she shook him to try to move him he always flipped the opposite way. HAHAHA. We didn't get any cute pictures really, he just wouldn't cooperate for that. Thankfully they did do a DVD for us, and he was doing some pretty funny stuff on there. At one point he was trying to flip over but couldn't quite make it. So he got stuck in the "A" position (picture your hands over your head on the floor and feet also on the floor with your butt in the air, like your trying to do a handstand but can't quite kick your legs up over your head) It was so funny, he actually picked one leg up like he was trying to kick it over to do the rest of the flip. It was tooooo cute. Oh and we also caught him playing with his penis. So I guess he really is Mike's child. It was so funny! It's crazy how much I already love that little man. The first thing I did when I got home was immediately put on the DVD and watch it over and over again. I'm going to have to be careful not to wear that thing out over the next few months. I mean I need to keep it in good shape to show his first girlfriend when the time comes. "Look,*enter his girlfriends name here* there London is playing with his penis, isn't it cute" HAHAHAHAHA

Everything looked really good. They checked his heart, kidneys, bladder, hands, feet, arms, legs, head, brain, umbilical cord, and upper lip (to make sure he didn't have a cleft lip). Everything check out PERFECTLY!!!! He weights 14 oz so he is only 2 oz away from a pound now. He is still measuring big by over a week. The Dr told us today, that even though I haven't gained much weight yet (only 3 lbs), that I needed to be careful not to gain too much since I was so HUGE as a baby. He said the more weight you gain the more weight the baby gains and since I am genetically more likely to have a LARGE baby, I really need to keep an eye on it and only gain about 35 lbs. Hopefully I can do that. However with the holidays coming up, it's gonna be tough! I'm sure I'll manage though.

Well I am off to go shopping and buy London a baby book!! I need to start organizing all of these ultrasound pictures.

So yep, its a boy! I was SHOCKED!!!!!!!! In case you couldn't figure it out, what your looking at is the baby's butt (like he is sitting on a toilet seat) the long thing to the left and right are his legs and the little thing in the middle is his penis. He was all about showing it off this morning. The tech said "wow he's got a big penis" HAHAHA. I knew Mike would be happy about that. She then started trying to measure other stuff on his body and he kept moving his leg to show off his new penis some more. She started laughing and said "wow, he is proud of that thing" I personally think he was just sick of me calling him Greysen and wanted us to KNOW he was a London.



The next picture is just another head shot. That picture that I took of it is not very good, on the real one you can see the nose and little lips. The dots above its face are him holding his hands in the air, probably throwing Mike some more gang signs HAHAHA!. It's crazy how much HE has grown in the last 3 weeks. Before it looked like he had plenty of room in there but today he looked cramped. He was measuring big for his age and everything, so maybe he is going to be a tall little boy after all!

Hummmm, Things are pretty boring around here right now. Soooooooo, I got a little crazy the other day and bought a Fetal Doppler (so I can hear the baby's heart beat any time I want)!! It wasn't very expensive, just $100. I'm just such a nervous nelly these days. I am now 12 weeks but really don't think I will be able to relax until closer to 20 weeks. So I figured the doppler would help me relax a little, you know until that one random night where the baby is hiding and I can't find the heartbeat. Then all of you will have to talk me off the ledge. HAHAHA. Don't say I didn't warn you ladies! Anyway, I got the doppler in the mail yesterday and IMMEDIATELY tried using it. It took about 5 mins but I eventually found the baby's heart beat. It was so nice to hear it again. It really just helped me relax. After all these miscarriages, a little reassurance goes a LONG WAY.

Mike leaves soon for a short 6 week deployment, don't ask why they need him overseas for 6 weeks, but I guess they do!!! Hey, at least it's a SHORT trip, I can't complain!

Oh and here is the ultrasound picture from our last visit at 11 weeks and 1 day.

Well Mike and I went in for my 11w1d u/s today and got the bad news that Baby B died about a week ago. Its crazy to me because we had an ultrasound only a few days before it happened and he or she had a strong heartbeat and looked great. I know this sometimes happens with Twins but after 10 weeks, I just wasn't expecting it. I guess no one ever does though. Baby A (Who will from now on just be "THE BABY" ) Looked great, very healthy, and measuring right on track. It was so cool, we could see it kicking and wiggling its arms and moving all around. It's a fully formed baby now. They also told us that they think The Baby is a girl!!! She warned us that it's still early and plenty of room for error, but by the way the baby looked today from a couple of different angles, she definitely thought it was a GIRL!

I'm doing OK, I really don't think the news about baby B has sunk in yet. It's almost like I'm numb. I'm sure things will start to sink in over the next few days, however for now I'm just trying to focus on the amazing pictures of our one surviving baby!

And the appt went great today, both the little ones measured right on track of 9w1d with Heartbeats of 170 and 179. I was so excited because the Dr told me that since we have made it this far and the babies have such strong growth and heartrates, he said my m/c rate has dropped to about 2-3%, that was music to my ears!! Today was also the first time they did an abdominal u/s instead of a transvaginal, which was great. I actually felt like a pregnant woman pulling up my shirt and getting the gel squeezed on my belly. It's crazy how you can love something so much even when they are just the size of a paper clip HAHAHA!!

Well today, I had quite a scare. Let me start this out by saying EVERYTHING IS FINE!!!

Today started out just as normal as can be. However at around 2pm as I went to the bathroom for the MILLIONTH time, I noticed I was bleeding. I immediately FREAKED OUT! I quickly called my Dr who told me to come in right away. 15 min later I was laying half-naked on the ultrasound table. I was terrified, I was beyond positive that I was having another miscarriage. On the way to the Dr., I called Mike, who really didn't know what to say to calm me down, and honestly, there was nothing he could say. Anyway, to make this long story short, the babies are FINE! The ultrasound showed a small bleed in my uterus, probably that started out as an implantation "bruise" that ruptured. The Dr said not to worry about it, and it should stop bleeding in the next few hours (which it did).
The babies both had GREAT heartbeats, and wow, they had grown SOOOOOOO much over the past week. Baby B is no longer measuring behind, both are now measuring right on track at 7w4d. Their heart rates were Baby A: 167 and Baby B: 150. It was such a huge relief to see them again. This time they even looked like babies, Ok, well actually more like gummy bears, but at least they are no longer BLOBS :) I will scan the pictures and post them tomorrow, I must warn you though, they are pretty darn cute!!! I mean look at the pics in yesterdays post if you need conformation HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

Yep you read that right!!

T W I N S !!!

I got to see both babies heartbeats. Baby A measured right on track with a heartbeat of 122, and Baby B measured 3 days behind with a heartbeat of 110. The Dr was NOT concerned with Baby B being smaller because he/she still fell with in the healthy size/heartbeat range.

It was so amazing to see their little hearts beating, I was a sobbing mess laying on that ultra sound table.
They gave me two REALLY cute u/s pictures. HERE THEY ARE!!!


Oh on a side note: I puked this morning, let the morning sickness begin!!!

Well I have my ultrasound tomorrow. I'm a little bit nervous and ALOT excited! I just want it to be OVER with already in some ways!! Its sad, that I am dreading such a special day, but the worrier in me is just nervous about what the Dr is going to say. I'm also sad because Mike isn't going to be able to be there with me. He is still up in New Jersey with the rest of his unit doing some training. My friend Leslie is going with me though, so at least I will not be alone.
I'm excited about it also!! It will be our first peek at the baby and who knows we might get a shock when they tell us how many babies are in there. I keep practicing my SHOCKED face in case they show me two heartbeats, and my fainting in case they show me three HAHAHA!

Its going to be REALLY good day, I just know it! It's still just so hard to believe that we are actually pregnant again, after trying for so long. I'll need all the prayers I can get tonight!