While the cat's away....

Well, Becky left for New Orleans today and we went for our 26 week 4 day appointment with Dr. Elliott. He even let us get a couple pictures with him so you all would have a face to put with the name! He's quite a ham. If you can't see it in the picture, the little princess door hanger says DIVA on it. About the appointment...they did a doppler sono on Danna's umbilical cord to see if there were any changes from last time. The good news is that she is not getting any worse and she has good muscle tone (she was clenching her fist), movement and fetal respirations were visible. The fetal respirations mean she's moving her diaphragm up and down and exercising her lungs (but not really breathing because mama does that for her right now). The only down side to the appointment was that her amniotic fluid sac has decreased even more in size. This means she has less room to move around and could potentially cause cord compression problems. Dr Elliott assured us the chances of that were very slim and it is not related to her placental problems. So, in a nutshell, she's already high maintenance and causing her parents and family/friends worry and stress!

We also discussed my hospital admission plans. Doc wants me in the hospital around week 27 (which begins on Monday, Oct 22nd). So I'm going in on Tuesday the 23rd because Dr Elliott is on-call at the hospital that day. In the hospital, they plan to keep a close eye on the babies - especially Danna. They'll do Doppler sonos on her at least twice a week and recheck her growth when I reach 28 weeks (Oct 29th). They'll also be able to monitor my blood pressure and start me on Mag Sulfate and steroids. The steroids will help the babies' lungs develop more quickly since they'll be premature.

I've been doing well so far. Last night we had a minor eyebrow raising incident. I had a small amount of spotting so I called the nurse to see what she wanted me to do. Of course, I knew what she was going to say....go get it checked out at OB triage in the hospital. So we did. They checked me out, did some blood work and checked the babies' heart rates and placentas by ultrasound. Everything was good except I had an elevated uric acid level. Dr Elliott said this could indicate the start of preecclampsia. I've been monitoring my blood pressure everyday and it's been within normal ranges, so it's just another thing to keep our eyes on. Then, after I got released from the hospital, I did my contraction monitoring. I had 7 contractions in the hour, so I gave myself an extra dose of Terbutaline (the medication in the pump in my leg). I had to re-monitor then and the next session I had 8 contractions. The Matria nurse was concerned but she let me try one more bolus of medicine and another hour of monitoring. Third time's a charm! I only had 3 contractions and she finally let me go to bed around 0300 am.

On a different note, thank you to cousins Maria, TJ, Indy and Aiden Frevert for the care package we got in the mail! There was all sorts of candy, beef jerky, gum, a Baby Beethoven CD, 4 mini decorated pumpkins, Halloween cards, lovely drawings from Indy and Aiden and even some decaf coffee singles for me! I think I'm on a sugar high. We had fun going through it with Becky - she says thank you, too.

A few people have asked what kind of things they could send. To be quite honest, we really don't need anything. We just like receiving any news/notes from anyone!

Deb, we'd love to see you in November! Yes, we have tried the In-n-Out burgers. They had to bring mine home to me, so it was a little cold. But we'll definitely give it another try!

About the pictures.... Billy thought it'd be funny to do mugshots and profiles since Becky's away and I'm on house arrest. Not the best pictures, but we'll post more soon. Next up, our adventures with Stephanie and Kelly this weekend! Billy picks them up from the airport tomorrow morning and we are so excited!

Keep the comments coming...we really do read all of them multiple times. We'll try to start posting in the comments section as well to answer questions that pop up as we go.

Love,
Billy, Moni and the quad squad

P.S. Aunt Bert, Billy spells his name like the boy version. Not with an "ie". He wanted me to let you know. And we're spelling Laine like so (kind of like Elaine). By the way, that was a great comment and we appreciate all the kind words.

P.S.S. No more signing with initials only. Who are you, D.H.? I guess we'll find out when the snail mail gets here.