Friday, March 20, 2009

23 Weeks and 3 days!

Hi everyone! I am so excited and proud to tell you that I had a great doctor's appointment this week. Everything continues to look stable and the babies are growing nicely. In fact, the appointment went so well that the doctor doesn't feel he needs to see me next week. He also took some of my restrictions off of me. I am allowed to move around for up to 15 minutes at a time... I am just supposed to make sure I rest between longer activities and lie down immediately if I feel any cramping or discomfort! Not bad. In fact the doctor recommended that since I don't get my big "outing" to Boston next week, Chris should take me out for lunch! We are hoping to work on that next weekend! It has definitely made all the lying down better.

I am also very excited about tomorrow- my baby shower will be happening at my house (since I am on bedrest and can't move too much) around lunch time. It is going to be so much fun to see everyone who can make it!

I'll try to update this early next week! Have a great weekend!

Sunday, March 15, 2009

Day 18... still on bedrest!

I am so proud of myself... it is day 18 of lying on the couch/lying in bed- and I still can be socially appropriate when people come over! Yay! This past Wednesday I got to have another adventure into Boston. The adventure started with Whitney driving me to the Liberty Tree Mall to meet up with Chris (so he did not have to take any time off work for the doctor's appointment). I even got to go into Target to go to the bathroom! Then Chris and I drove into Boston. The poor doctor was running late due to several emergencies. I was very happy to wait- that it was not me who was having the emergency! The doctor said that I am doing very well and everything is staying stable. Basically I was told to continue doing what I have been- lying down in at least a semi-recline... on my side as much as possible, getting up for only 5 minutes or so per hour. It isn't fun, but as long as it continues to work it is worth it!

Today, Chris is upstairs putting together 3 cribs! It is going to be strange to see the 3 cribs put together. It makes the whole thing more real (not like bedrest hasn't made things real already!). It also sounds like we will have the triplet's dresser soon... Whitney has been refinishing a dresser she used as a kid. I can't wait to see it in the nursery.

Tuesday, March 10, 2009

Pictures!







Above are some photographs of Erin taken by Kristin Gleason Griffin. We think they turned out fantastic and had to share them with you. These are only the first few Kristin sent along, we're expecting a DVD with lots more (about 60 in total!). We hope you enjoy them!

Saturday, March 7, 2009

What a week it has been...

Hi Everyone,

Sorry this post is so belated; I know a few of you out there have been waiting to hear what the hell happened last week. Here is the story:

On Wednesday 2/25 we went in to Boston for a standard appointment just to check in and make sure everything was progressing as it should... Well, as it turns out things were starting to progress as they shouldn't. The ultrasound showed that Erin had "funneling" in her cervix. Basically, her cervix was starting to shorten and open. While this may not have been immediately dangerous, if allowed to continue it would likely have lead to pre-term labor and other things that we didn't want to have happen. The solution to this was a surgical procedure called a cervical cerclage which involves putting a stitch around the cervix to keep it from opening any further, and ideally reverse some of the funneling. In this situation the sooner the procedure could be done, the better, so off we went to be admitted and got ready for a long night... Our appointment had started around 4:00 Wednesday afternoon. Erin was finally in surgery just after 10:00 that night. She came out around 11:00 and I was able to get up to see her in recovery by 11:30. We finally settled into a room just after 1:00 Thursday morning and started to get some sleep around 2:00. We saw another doctor on Thursday and had another ultrasound done at 11:00 to see how things looked then. Everything seemed to be ok, so we were released and made it home just after 1:00 in the afternoon.

Now the good news, the surgery went extremely well and everyone came out ok. This past Wednesday, 3/4 we went back in to see what the final results of the surgery were. Things are looking good at this point. There have been no problems stemming from the surgery, and the funneling seems to have been partially reversed. The trade-off, however, is that Erin is now on modified bedrest for the duration of the pregnancy. Luckily, in this case she doesn't have to actually stay in bed all day, but can hang out on the couch and watch TV and use the newly installed wi-fi connection on her brand-spanking-new laptop. She's told her limit is about 5 minutes of being up and moving out of every hour. This sounds extreme, but the times when she's needed to be up for much longer than that (making trips to Boston for instance) she can feel the difference and becomes quite uncomfortable. She has now survived her first full week on bedrest, and while not happy about it, is starting to adjust. She welcomes visitors almost any time, since I'm still working and gone for a significant portion of the day. She's also getting plenty of milage out of our phone plan and her laptop (thank goodness for wi-fi). Many people have also been extremely generous providing meals since, as most of you know, Erin does the cooking around here for very good reason.

Other news around here is that Whitney's actually made it back and living about 2 minutes away. We're all happy to have her around to pawn work off onto... We feel very lucky to have so many friends and family all offering support in their various ways. No doubt the road ahead will continue to be challenging, but we feel we've cleared one major obstacle, and with so many others helping, we're confident in our ability to make it through to the other side. Thank you all.

-Chris