January 2009

By January I started telling Michael that I will never be pregnant again as I was growing increasingly uncomfortable! However, the babies were doing well. During our January ultrasound (you get lots of these with twins), the boys looked good but Twin B was 16% larger than Twin A. Measurements showed Twin weighed approximately 1 lb- 11 oz and Twin B weighed approximately 2 lb. This was the first sign there might be a growth discrepancy between the two but was not yet cause for alarm. My vital statistics continued to check out at all my prenatal visits.

But oh the miserable side effects of pregnancy! I had been living with pregnancy-induced carpal tunnel since mid-November due to all the extra fluids in my body. But in January my hands started to swell and only compounded the problem. My fingertips were perpetually tingly/numb and my hands, particularly the right one, were frequently in pain or they fell asleep. The pain was only worse at night when all the fluids in my body redistributed. When I woke up in the morning I was not even able to close my hands into a fist due to the swelling and I struggled just to take a shower. The last week of January I started waking up due to the pain in my right hand.

Although my feet and ankles were also swelling quite a bit (hello, club foot!), they did not cause me any pain and the swelling typically went down after sitting with my feet up or after sleeping.

Speaking of sleeping, I started having trouble around Thanksgiving, but really struggled to get a good night’s sleep over the Christmas holidays. While I was generally able to drift off at the beginning of the night, I frequently woke up due to discomfort, being hot, or to go the bathroom yet again! (Not to mention the snoring machine, er I mean Michael, that sleeps next to me.) Once awake, it was very hard to fall back asleep and I tossed and turned for what seemed like hours. I always seemed to be getting the best sleep right when the alarm went off for work. And of course when the weekend rolled around and I wasn’t on any kind of timeline I had the hardest time of all sleeping. Go figure!

The last two weeks of January I started having persistent headaches. I was essentially having one headache per day, but they went away with Tylenol, which was a good sign according to my doctor. I also had a migraine one evening (a first for me). The second week the headaches were less frequent, but still there.

I will stop the whining and groaning there because I don’t want to scare off all of you still planning to have kids. As Michael keeps reminding me, pregnancy will all be worth it when our beautiful baby boys arrive in our lives. I just wanted to give everyone a snapshot of the events leading up to February.