What a Shock - Pregnant With Triplets - Part 6

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Part 6:

Guest Blog: Wing walking for Rowcroft Hospice

Guest Blog: Let’s talk about collage

Guest Blog: Fundraiser makes £2,420 so far in memory of Charles

20- 25 Weeks. Pregnant with Triplets:

Writing this blog is tough, with every word I write memories flood in to my head making me laugh and making me cry, I know I was warned by my consultant from day one that this wasn’t going to be an easy pregnancy but I’ve tried to remain positive. I have had days where I’ve just curled up in a ball and cried but that little bit of hope inside of me eventually comes through and Martin, Tia and my family/friends lift me up and we keep battling on.

At 23 weeks we went for another scan, it’s getting harder and harder to see the babies clearly on each scan now. The babies are all getting so big that it just looks like a pile up inside of me. It is hard to determine whose legs and arms are whose. Even though they all have a thin membrane separating each of them the membrane is like Clingfilm, it moves, its stretches and they can all touch and cuddle each other, it is such a beautiful thing to see when we can make out exactly what’s happening! The consultant assures me that each baby knows the other is there and studies on twins have even proved after birth that they can comfort each other. If one is unwell at birth they try to keep the other with it as it helps to regulate their heartbeat, temperature and more. In my mind it’s just beautiful to know that my little girls already have some kind of bond. I swear sometimes it is like a turf war in my belly, they all kick me regularly. If I sit too far forward they all start kicking me hard! It is like they are warning me that I’m squashing them. As soon as I lay down at night they all wake up, to me it’s like their way of telling me they like the extra space. I love watching the kicks and jabs and the movement and it is because of this I can have some hope. It’s hard to describe how I know but I just know which one is kicking or moving.

In the scan we saw them all bouncing around, the consultant is great she knows my fears and as before she checks the little ones heartbeat first and there it is on screen blinking away, such a beautiful thing to see. In all pregnancies a scan is offered at around 20 weeks not just to determine the sex of the baby but most importantly to check for vital growth information, bone development, heart defects, kidneys, bladder and so on. In multiple pregnancies it is harder to see due to the lack of space, one baby is often in the way of the other so getting this information is harder and because I have an identical pair the amniotic fluid has to be measured, the reason for this is a relatively common fault called twin to twin transfusion, this can happen during any stage of the pregnancy and this is again why we get more scans. Because the identical babies share a placenta it needs to be checked that one isn’t getting more than the other. My identical girls seem to have the same amount of fluid at the moment and based on their femur measurements, head measurements and tummy measurements a weight can be calculated and they weigh 1.3lb and 1.4lb and Miss P (our consultant) has been able to get most of the other views she needed – such amazing news.

Our small daughter, our little fighter is still going strong, she is still stubborn and at every scan she seems to play hard ball! She is always in an awkward position so getting to see her heart is never easy! Getting to check her other organs always proves difficult and today was no different. She was laying right under my ribs horizontal, her head next to the bottom of my left side and butt and feet on the right side of my ribs and what made it hard was she was spine and butt up! It’s hard to get a view of her heart as her bones are becoming harder and create shadows making it impossible to see the chambers of her heart or check her blood flow, although we can see her heart beating the other important parts just can’t be seen. We need to see these because if she does have a birth defect its common for a fault to be present in the heart. She did roll on to her side slightly at one point which gave Miss P the chance to measure her tummy, her head and her femur bone but her ribs still got in the way of checking her heart properly. Martin and I have pretty much come to the conclusion that if she does have a birth defect then it is what it is! We can’t change anything, we will have to face what to do when she is born. The news on her weight isn’t great, she only weighs 372grams. Another blow, that’s almost half the weight of the largest girl!

Her weight indicates there is so much more going on that we will never get to the bottom of until she is born, it’s not a good sign and it’s not looking hopeful!

Why? Why can’t we just get some good news? It’s so hard to explain why I worry about her so much, people tell me I have 2 others growing inside of me to focus on but in my heart and my head I feel like I know the identical girls are fine. I love them all so much, it doesn’t matter that I haven’t met any of them yet, I feel them, I know they are there, I think about them every day, I plan for them. Here or not here they are my babies and I love them just as much as I will when they are born so getting bad news is equally devastating! I’m sure anyone who has been pregnant/expecting a baby can relate, just because they aren’t here doesn’t change how much you love them does it?

I go home and just go into my own bubble for a couple of days, I’m signed off work because of a number of problems I’ve had during the pregnancy. I get up in the morning I see Tia off to school and try and stay as positive as I can for her but as soon as she has left I’m on my own and all I can do is curl up in my bed and cry myself back to sleep.

A couple of days pass and my optimism is creeping back in, thanks to this and the support from my family and friends I start to get hopeful again and look at the positives. The simple fact of the matter is if my little girl is going to give up my body would show me signs, I would most likely be forced into labour if she died (by my body not the hospital), I would lose blood, there would be some sign! I haven’t lost any blood, my belly is getting bigger by the day and I haven’t gone into labour! This little girl is a fighter, she is sticking around!

My amazing friends organised an early baby shower for me, as I’ve said before a triplet pregnancy on average lasts 30 weeks so having a baby shower at around 24/25 weeks was a brilliant idea because none of us know how long I have left. My mother in law was asked by my friends – those who know I have a pretty twisted sense of humour to make me a cake, my friends sharing the same warped and slightly sick sense of humour asked her to make a pretty graphic cake! (I really hope I finally figure out of how to upload pictures on this blog because the cake has to be seen). It was safe to say none of us actually ate any of the more graphic parts of the cake, which included my guts and a so called replica of my vagina! I would like to say for the record my vagina does not look like that! Hahaha! I would also like to add I don’t have 6 toes on each foot either, just in case some smarty pants notices lol! I must say the cake filling was amazing but I had no doubt it would be anything but, Jayne is an exceptional baker and I think it also helps that she is a Thornton of the Thornton chocolate family and a bloody good mother who year on year since her own kids where born has made cakes for each of them and fine-tuned her skills, I can’t state enough how much I look forward to going to Jayne’s for dinner especially if a cake is also on offer! I would also like to thank Simply Sue-perb cakes of Paignton, they kindly donated an absolutely stunning cake! A three tier cake that was so beautifully decorated, so classy and just stunning, their generosity is beyond any I could have imagined and I really couldn’t be more grateful. (https://www.facebook.com/SimplySuePerbCakes )

My crazy friends made some games for us to play, the most hilarious to see must have been the one where we had to shove a filled balloon up our tops, hold a penny between our knees and waddle over to a pot to drop the pennies in! There isn’t much room for anything else to go up the front of my dress anymore! I had to shove the balloon up the back of my dress and looked a lot like daffy duck! Another game was “Guess what was in the nappy” although a lot of the nappies looked like they contained a baby’s first poo I was assured it was all edible! The rest I will leave to your imagination!

I am so thankful for my amazing friends Larissa and Sharon for planning all of this, I am so thankful for everyone who turned up, the best part about the entire day was just having those people around me who care for me there, to have their support and for them making me relax and enjoy such a lovely day. I know many of my family members from Liverpool couldn’t make it but they all sent their love and I know I will see them when the babies are here and that is equally as important because I know I will need a lot of support then. My sister who is expecting twins came from Berkshire and it feels like forever since I last saw her I was so over the moon to see her! I would also like to add my own Mother came, this isn’t someone I’ve gone into any detail about in my blog, we are a pair of stubborn bas***ds and ever since I can remember we have argued about everything, we have never shared an opinion and we go years without talking but at the baby shower none of that mattered, she came and her just being there means so much to me.

I would also like to mention that the baby shower was filmed so my friends being the way they are and me being me we did go slightly over the top on “self-preparation”. We had spray tans the night before, made sure our nails where done booked a hairdresser and slapped on a lot of make up the day of the baby shower! At this point I think it’s only fair for me to thank the Grosvenor Hotel in Torquay for not having any dark wood or mahogany furniture in the room we used for the shower because my hilarious friend Claire had to one up us on the tan and go 2% darker than the rest of us! She is so going to kill me when she reads this J. It’s safe to say she would have blended in with dark wood furniture! (I love you really Claire)

Another bit of random news that lifts my spirits, I entered one of those Facebook competitions to win a photo-shoot for babies all I had to do was enter my name and put what age baby I would like to have a photo-shoot for – I simply wrote new born. I don’t usually enter these type of competitions, I entered one once I watched the page in question gain thousands of new followers and the day the winner was meant to be announced they deactivated their account – only to appear about a month later with thousands upon thousands of those followers who no doubt forgot about the competition! Anyway thank you to http://www.magicmemoriesphotography.co.uk/ or www.facebook.com/pages/Magic-Memories-Photography

I really thought things where starting to change for the better, I felt like for the first time in months actually for the first time since we found out we are expecting triplets I started to relax, I started to enjoy being pregnant, I started to look forward to the scans instead of dreading everything that could possibly go wrong. I wish I hadn’t, I feel like I’ve jinx myself, the news I received at our next scan has left me devastated and worried for the lives of my babies. I sit here writing this not knowing what happens next, not knowing if these little girls will keep on fighting or if I’m going to lose them all, my heart is breaking every minute of every day and I’m so scared, although I have my friends and family around me I feel so alone in my head. I want to keep fighting, I want my babies to keep fighting but I’m struggling and with every ache or pain I get I convince myself it’s all about to be over.

According to the Baby Center app the average baby at 25 weeks is 35cm long and weighs about 660g.

For regular updates please have a look at my Facebook page: www.facebook.com/torbaytriplets