17 Weeks

This week has thankfully gone pretty smoothly.

Last weekend, we started to put some sort of registries together.  What this really means is we walked through a couple stores and started scanning anything that looked cute and that we thought we might need.  And since we don’t know the genders of the babies yet, we scanned a lot of things in both boy and girl colors.  The one thing we discovered in all of this is babies need a lot of things, y’all!

I spent some time throughout this week trying to clean up these messes we called registries.  Ya know, researching all the little gadgets, finding the places that have the best prices, and marveling in the beast that is the double tandem stroller!  Seriously, those things are huge, and heavy, but oh so awesome!  Side note: I can’t help but laugh at the reviews that say “this double stroller is so heavy – way heavier than my single stroller”.  Uhh, yeah!  Because it’s a DOUBLE!!  People want a solid, sturdy, safe(!) double stroller that weighs nothing – uhh, not gonna happen.  My take is, after carrying around two babies, I’ll be buff enough to lift anything. ;)

We've still got some work to do on the registries, but for now, we’re just excited to have gotten them started!

And now, our weekly update (as told by the twins)…

Sleep: We've continued to let mom sleep pretty good this week.  We like to have a little dance party before bed though – that’s when she feels little tickles the most.  Don’t be fooled though, we still wake her up every morning around 2:00am to send her to the bathroom.  We don’t want you to forget about us mom! 

Cravings: I haven’t really had any cravings this week – shocking, I know!  However, I have come to discover that just recently, a strong taste of garlic kind of grosses me out.  I’m ok with the smell, I've even continued to cook with it.  I just don’t use as much as I have in the past, which I think makes Henry sad because he loves garlic.  Sorry sweets!

Symptoms: I haven’t really had any symptoms this week either, unless you count having slight trouble tying my own shoes. =O  My belly gets in the way and sometimes, if I bend too far over, it hurts!  I think the further along I get, I’ll just stick to slip on shoes. :)

How we’re growing: This week, the skeletons in our bodies are changing from soft cartilage to bone!  So mom should start to feel our kicks a little more soon.  From head to bottom, we’re about 5” long and weigh 5 ounces, each!

Best moment of the week: Starting to feel small movements (I think)!  Every so often, I feel little tickles in my belly – it feels like somebody is running a feather over my skin, but on the inside.  I've also felt a few little “pops” from the inside.  I've never felt anything like these sensations before, so my guess is it’s the babies moving around!

What Mom & Dad are looking forward to this coming week: Our next prenatal appointment this coming Wednesday!  Hopefully we’ll get to hear the babies’ heartbeats again!  At this appointment is where we’ll schedule the anatomy scans of the babies with the perinatologist*.  That’s the appointment where we’ll finally get to find out the babies’ genders!!

We’re also traveling to El Paso later this week for the Vallejo Family Reunion, so we’re pretty excited about that too!

* A perinatologist is a maternal fetal medicine doctor, which is a high risk pregnancy doctor.  So far, everything about this pregnancy, including the babies’ growths have gone great!  It is just customary for an expecting mom of multiples to have a high risk specialist on her team “just in case”.  A woman’s body goes through so much carrying just one baby – the added stress of carrying a second baby at the same time automatically makes a multiples pregnancy a high risk one.  Rather than dwell on the what-if’s and get wrapped up in the “high risk” part, I’m just going to continue giving thanks to God for the double abundant blessings that are these two sweet babies.