Third trimester update

Tags

exercise in twin pregnancy, geriatric pregnancy, induction, IVF, NCT, older mum, third trimester, twins, twins club, vaginal birth

I realise I’ve not blogged much about my third trimester. Truth be told it’s been fairly uneventful physically which is a huge relief after my stressful first trimester and the  mental taxation of working through various infertility hang ups. I actually enjoyed some of it particularly the first few weeks of the third trimester. I’m so obviously pregnant that I’ve just had to acknowledge it and people have been so kind especially those who know what it took to get here – we’ve been quite open about the IVF if not the donor side of things.

I’m currently 34.5 weeks. For a twin pregnancy I’ve had a fairly easy time lately. I’m not that huge (well relatively for twins) and I’m carrying at the front. From the back I don’t look pregnant and from the front look quite small. From the side is quite another matter!

Ive been able to keep exercising. Largely yoga, Pilates and barre (which is a ballet type class). Now I’m 34 weeks I think maybe just 1 more week of exercising as it’s getting a bit challenging. I only started to get swollen ankles at about 31 weeks – I admit that was a shock! Things are just starting to get uncomfortable now – it’s awkward to find a position to sit in and sleeping isn’t great and hasn’t been for some time – whichever side I lie on one of the twins starts to kick me – neither of them seem to like me lying on them which isn’t really surprising.

Twin 2 is doing really well despite the missing artery in their cord. In fact both twins are estimated a good size for twins which is just awesome. I was a bit worried they wouldn’t as whilst I’ve put on a lot of weight it’s actually at the bottom of the recommended weight gain for someone having twins, but then I  am small.

Twin 2 is my little gymnast pickle. They squirm around and every scan are in a different position and like to hide from the sonographer. At 29 weeks they were head down facing their sibling but last scan were oblique (lying sort of down but diagonally with their feet up by my ribs). I think they’ve just moved again – there is a lump under my ribs on the right which is either a bottom or their back – don’t think it’s their head.

Twin 1 is my reliable little one. They’ve been head down on my left side since 17 weeks – never really changing position ( I really hope I’ve not just jinxed that).  They have a very strong kick and hiccup a lot!

I’m excited to meet them both. But they can wait another couple of weeks! I’m booked in for an induction at 37 weeks. I’m hoping to have a  vaginal birth but know I might have to have a caesarean. At the moment all looks good for a vaginal birth. I started getting some contractions 2 weeks ago but they’re very sporadic so at the moment things aren’t quite imminent (I hope – I want to get to 36 weeks ideally).

We’ve joined a local twins club and have a WhatsApp group of parents due around the same time. The group hasn’t really gelled yet as we’ve only met up once and then the second time lots of people (including us) couldn’t go. The first couple had their twins at nearly 27 weeks which has caused them a lot of stress obviously, though the twins are mainly doing well, but I think it means no one else has announced their births on the group (I know 3 other sets of twins have been born, 2 are imminent, then probably us, then 3 more sets later in Jan and Feb). The group is fairly local but will require a bit of travel in south London to meet up so we’ll see if it develops into anything once all our twins are born – hoping it does as they will totally understand what it’s like to have twins. I’m still having driving lessons so I might not be able to drive to these places – public transport with twins is a challenge though totally doable (according to a couple of mums).

We’ve also done NCT classes (national childbirth trust parenting for anyone not in the UK) and met a nice bunch of people – we’re the only ones having twins and some of us met up for dinner last week. A couple of them live really near us so hoping that meeting up will be easy – a number of them have offered me a spare pair of hands so fingers crossed they don’t mind helping out with one of mine when theirs are sleeping if we’re out! We also did a one off NCT twins seminar, there were 2 other couples there, they seemed very nice but it’s hard to build up a relationship when you’re only there for 3 hours.

All in all for a ‘geriatric’ mum I’ve done quite well – no high blood pressure, no gestational diabetes etc. I do think they lay on the scare mongering a bit much – but I also realise I’ve been incredibly lucky. I do however put the easier later stages of pregnancy down partly to exercise. I’m not going overboard but have continued to keep active all the way through.

I am a bit nervous about induction though. I’ve not heard great things about it. But we will see. The most important thing is that the twins are born healthy and safely. I’ve not written about this before but we have friends who lost one of their twins during childbirth about 6 years ago. There was nothing wrong with her but complications occurred during birth. As I get nearer to birth it plays on my mind. I am however going to an excellent hospital which specialises in intensive care for babies and in twin pregnancy. I should be in good hands.

I start maternity leave on Monday (well actually some annual leave followed by maternity leave) which is weird. I felt very odd when I left the office. My team bought me some beautiful flowers and lots of pamper items which was very thoughtful. I have a lot to do though so not sure how relaxing my first week off is going to be! I have to finish Christmas shopping (though will try to go online), still have some baby bits to get (which I’m panicking about a bit), we have our house renovation going (and lots of decisions to make in next week) and I’m desperately trying to pass my driving test! On top of all that we’re living at my in laws, whilst they are very accommodating most of the time it’s not my house and I can’t ever just lie on the sofa watching tv, which let’s face it is one of the perks of maternity leave when you have no other children and before your babies arrive! I feel a bit like a student, spending a lot of time in my bedroom on the internet plus I spend an awful lot of time on trains going to check up on our house and attend my various hospital and midwife appointments which are now a bit of a trek away. I also have to go over to my parents next week and sort out the room for when we move there after the babies are born. The nomadic lifestyle is getting on top of me a bit and I just wish we were in our own house. But I will be very grateful for the additional help when the twins arrive so I can’t complain too much.

My lovely little brother has offered me his flat next week – he works from home but has a  study so says I can come round and lie on the sofa in his lounge eating chocolate and drinking tea and watching netflix and sky, as long as I occasionally make him a cup of tea! And Christmas week he’s taking me to see Star Wars. He lives back near my house but it’s totally worth the journey for those offers. I am pretty damn lucky to have amazing family and friends.

 

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Bye bye first trimester

Tags

Donor eggs, fertility, Infertility, IVF, nuchal scan, older mum, PGS, scan, twins

This post is a bit late as it’s been sitting in my drafts for a while. I’m now over the (horrible, slightly bloody, nerve-wracking) first trimester. There is still a really long way to go and I still take it week to week but I am so very grateful to be here.

At about 12 weeks I had my midwife booking in appointment. She was really lovely as she went through all the various checklists and questions and so thoughtful when asking me to run through my previous pregnancies/miscarriages. Unsurprisingly she recommended a hospital birth due to the twin pregnancy, and the pregnancy has been classed as high risk due to the twins, my thyroid (which admittedly is a non issue according to the NHS guidelines), and my quote ‘geriatric age’ (although I used donor eggs being older than 37 still carries risks). Largely due to the twins I’ll have consultant and midwife combined care.

At 13 weeks and 1 day I had my first NHS scan, the nuchal scan where they test for Down’s, Edwards’ and Patau’s syndromes using a scan and blood test. These usually happen between 10-14 weeks. My hospital is a research hospital and they have a brand new state of the art foetal research unit. This means that at the moment I don’t need to go anywhere near the awful EPU that holds so many bad memories. As it’s a research facility the sonographers are all researchers, I was expecting this but not to have 3 in the room. The ‘trainee’ started to do the scan and straight away they were like “woah twins why didn’t you say?” all I can say is it’s a good job I knew already and they obviously hadn’t read my notes – the reason I didn’t say anything was mainly because I get so nervous about scans. Anyway, the more experienced researcher then had to do the scan whilst the other experienced one fired multiple questions at me and the trainee hovered around. I hardly got to see any of twin 1 because they were constantly asking q’s but I could see they were slowly moving around. I actually got to watch twin 2 a bit more. Just like last time he/she was going a bit crazy – drumming their heels on the edge of the sack and then possibly sucking their thumb. The sonographer found it difficult to take measurements because they were so active. Luckily they settled down after a while.

We then had to wait for the results of the nuchal test which was slightly nerve wracking, though as we’d had PGS on our embryos so we were fairly confident that the twins wouldn’t be high risk, and they weren’t which was a relief.

A week later at 14 weeks I had my first consultant appointment, again at the research centre. It was a bit of a non event. I was told more than once that I was high risk due to my geriatric age. I get it, I don’t think they need to mention it more than once. In the end after a bit of a lecture about blood pressure I felt compelled to point out that my blood pressure is great, until recently I ran 35 miles a week, and i’m still doing some exercise.

More interesting was a very quick discussion about my birth options. My hospital induces ladies pregnant with twins at 37 weeks which I’m not too pleased about but chances are I may not get to then anyway. The consultant was pleased to hear I wanted to try a vaginal birth (I don’t really want to say ‘natural’, aren’t all births to an extent natural? It’s a bit like the ‘are your twins natural?’ question. I’d be so tempted to say something like ‘well I guess so as they’re not plastic’). But at the end of the day isn’t the main thing to have 2 healthy babies, it doesn’t really matter how they arrive.

I now have to wait until 19 weeks for my first proper midwife appointment and 21 weeks for my next scan. It seems a lifetime away!

I’m looking a bit inbetween – is she a bit fat or a bit pregnant? So far I’m managing to hide it fairly well at work I think!

I have some pics of the scan but I don’t know whether to post as they look much more like babies. I guess most people reading this wouldn’t mind?

 

 

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