Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Appointment Update (21.5 weeks)

Melissa had another appointment this afternoon and everything looks great, both with her and all 3 babies. They performed ultrasounds to get growth and development measurements on all three boys. They all checked out great. "A" and "B" are measuring 15 ounces while "C" is exactly one pound. All of the measurements are right in line with expectations for 21+ weeks.

If you recall from the last appointment (9/21) there were two very minor issues that the doctor wanted to keep an eye on. Boy A had a little bit of excess fluid in his left kidney...and Boy C had a slight issue with the dura not completely fusing together at the top the brain. Well, we are happy to report that today's ultrasounds show that both of these issues are no longer issues. Boy C's dura shows no issues any more, meaning it has completely fused, like normal. Boy A's kidney was measuring a proper amount of fluid, well within normal range, so everything is fine there too!

The doctor was also extremely pleased with Melissa's condition as well. She's been feeling very well (relatively speaking of course). She obviously gets fatigued quicker than normal, but for being almost 22 weeks pregnant with triplets, she's holding up really, really well. And, according to the doctor, her cervix looks fantastic! Trust me, that's all the details you want. :)

We have appointments scheduled on two week intervals (for the next 6 weeks), which gets us through Thanksgiving and then he said we'd go to weekly after that. So the next one is on Tuesday, Nov 2nd. As for bed-rest, the doctor still has no specific time-line for Melissa, but he said that Melissa can continue with her current schedule and we will continue to play things by ear. Since Melissa has her planning period as the first class of the day, she's going to try to go in late (sometime during the middle of that planning period) a couple of days a week. Occasionally if she doesn't sleep well at night, or has had a rough day the day before, going in late will really help her body to just chill out a little bit. The doctor liked this idea a lot. He said that her body will be the judge of when she needs to change her work schedule and/or eventually go on bed-rest. He has the philosophy that unless it's medically necessary for bed-rest, he is fine for Melissa to continue working and doing things that she feels comfortable doing. He obviously wants her to continue to take it easy, but at least for now, he thinks it's actually better for her to continue being active (relatively speaking of course). That made us both feel great, because Melissa and I are both pretty sure that she would go crazy if she was forced to be on bed-rest before she really felt her body needed it. And when Momma's crazy, we're all crazy!

We are extremely pleased with today's appointment and the results. Again, the next appointment is Tuesday, Nov 2nd. We'll have another update that evening. Here are a few ultrasound pictures of the triplets.

Supposedly this first one is a picture of all 3...if you can pick out three heads, well, you should be an ultrasound technician!


This is a profile picture of Boy A.



And Boy B...


And Boy C...