our exciting week

This has been a rather exciting few days! We found out that Chris and I will be moving to Houston Texas where he will be working for Hewlett Packard! We are so wildly grateful for the gracious prayers and support we have received on our account for that. Thanks Guys!



We have also been overwhelmed with offers of help and dinners since I have had to go on bed rest. So many of you have willingly offered help and to my surprise didn’t even have to be told exactly what was wrong. Just the simple fact that we needed help was enough to provoke people into action. Truly, I had no idea that so many people would give so anxiously and graciously of their efforts and time. Thank you guys.

I thought I would offer an official explanation of what is going on. Some of you may have heard that I was having ‘cramps’ or that the babies were sick? Or just that I was dying in the hospital and had been moved to my home to live out my last few remaining moments in my own bed?


Here is what was really going on:

First of all, there weren’t cramps really. I was sore and had a hard time walking. It hurt in a strange, ‘here is pressure where it shouldn’t be’ way and there would be occasional hard pangs down low that just felt scary; looking back I think it was our little girl kicking me where she shouldn't have been able to yet. Walking was like dragging my feet through waist high mud.

After a very long, convoluted story’s worth of confusion and mess, I ended up getting a checkup with the head of the high-risk maternal fetal medicine, Dr. Brown. He didn’t seem concerned until he had heard of my family history with second term miscarriage. It was not long after that he had discovered my cervical length to be 2.7 cm. (picture provided to explain what that is for some of you unmarried gents). The average cervix at this point should be closer to 4 cm.


It was plain that my cervical length was distressing to him and he even brought in another doctor to check again because the initial numbers were.. how do you say?... not good? The second set was no different and when the room had cleared of the extra personnel, he looked at us and told me that if I had a job, I needed to quit because it was time to “take it easy” and come back after the weekend so that they could check on me again.



Monday morning found us anxiously waiting in the ultrasound room for our newest measurements. Hardly any time had passed before there were anxious steps in the hallway and a doctor’s voice saying ‘no, it’s ok, I will tell them.’

She entered and perched on a revolving stool with a worried face. She informed us that my cervix was now at 1.1 cm. We had lost over 1 ½ cm just over the weekend. Another few days like that and this pregnancy would be over; there would be nothing anyone could do about it. She had already called the hospital where they would be waiting for us. For a moment she left us to ensure that our latest cervix measurements were sent directly to the hospital and I took the chance to break down.

I grabbed Chris and buried my face in his shoulder thinking of all the times I had been walking around when I had not need to. The thing that gets me is that I knew to look out for this. I knew it was perfectly possible, and even anticipated that this could happen to me. It had already happened to my sister. Images passed in my head of my sister when she was trying to keep her twins after her cervix had shortened and even opened before it was discovered. I thought of her anxious face as she told me her little boy’s foot was already ‘hanging out,’ and finally remembered watching her wilt as they picked sweet tombstones for their twins.

As we left the doctor’s office, she solemnly told us to go through emergency so that we could get a wheel chair, instead of walking in on my feet.

When we arrived at the hospital there was a flutter of nurses, urine samples (I am getting so good at those), blood tests, and more nurses. They started trying to monitor me for contractions and tested occasionally for fetal heart beats. No contractions and two strong heart beats. The doctor finally came in, trepidation dripping from every line of his body. I actually felt sorry for him. He told us that in the absence of contractions they imagined the reason that our babies threatened to fall out was that I had an incompetent cervix.

Unfortunately, because this was my first pregnancy and because it was twins, the problem could just as easily be that my body was simply unable to handle the load. Either way, he said that the only option at this point was a cerclage (they basically try to sew your cervix closed so it can’t open more), which is normally only used in a select group of women and is put in long before this point. He then rattled off a huge list of statistics and studies that had been done on ‘last minute cerclage’ single baby pregnancies. All of them seemed to indicate that it didn’t make any difference. He seemed even less optimistic as there was even less chance that this would help in a twin pregnancy. He did, however think that a cerclage just maybe, might get us to 24 weeks gestation which would mean that it was conceivable to save them outside the womb. But no promises.

I was not going to sit back and let these kids go just because statistically it looked less than promising. I told the doctor in no uncertain terms that we were getting a cerclage and as he drew a diagram of how the surgery would go I teased him, asking if it ever bothered his wife that he was always drawing dirty pictures for strange women. He laughed and the combination of our resolve and the lighter mood seemed to put him more at ease.

So, long story even longer, we had an amniocentesis to be sure that it wasn’t just an infection – which the doctor told us was possible and meant that we would simply have to loose the babies because it was going to kill them and make me deathly ill. Then I had an epidural (gosh I love drugs). One surgery and three episodes of inexplicable pulse racing, ear ringing, cold sweat delirium that had doctors racing and Chris looking panic stricken, I had my cerclage.

Glories be, it seems to be holding, which means those kids are still blissfully swimming where they should be. During the follow up appointment we were told that I could walk around a little. That was a relief. In a tone indicating that she was being extraordinarily generous, the doctor also told us that I could even occasionally go to something like the movies or dinner (they were implicitly different occasions. Dinner or a Movie, not both.).

So there it is. That is what happened. I hope my in-laws forgive me for not going to the Florida Disney world vacation, I know that pregnancy in the past has not been a reason not to go on family vacations... You should have seen the doctors response when we asked about it, though. Apparently she seemed to think the ‘dinner or movie, but not both’ liberty was being stretched a bit far.

(to the side you, too can vote on how far you think we will last in light of this new and exciting update!... I guess it feels less scary if you can talk and joke about it.)