Happy Thanksgiving to ALL!

Thanksgiving is tomorrow and a lot of you are probably wondering what my plans are. I will be staying in the hospital. In the beginning I thought maybe I could go home, but it would just be too hard to do that, they would have actually had to discharge me and re admit me. It's not that big of a deal to me because I am used to missing out on holidays since I have been in the medical profession so long. Randall is going to stay with me tonight and we will be together all day tomorrow and plan to watch football. Les and Yvonne are coming in the morning and of course my parents are coming to see me later and I hope they will bring us some good food. So although I won't be able to be a my family's home for the holiday I will be with family. We have so many things to be thankful for this year. With all the hard times in this country right now we are actually very blessed. We still have our family and friends, we have our jobs, our homes, our health and most of all we still have our girls on their way. Each day we make it towards that 32 week mark is a blessing!!

As for the girls they have been doing great on the NSTs that are done twice a day. The doctors and nurses are always impressed. The tests are an hour long now and the nurses are so thankful that they are able to consistently find the girls in the same spot and strap me onto the monitor(they are running out of room in there to move as much). The first 4 weeks they would have to hold them on and chase them. I can feel them moving and see them poke their body parts into my abdomen and then I try to figure out if it was a hand, foot, head, back or their bottom. The last time we had to have an ultrasound they were both breech (heads up) so I am assuming it's their head I see poking up and then of course they like using my bladder for their personal trampoline. It all so amazing, although I know there are 2 little girls in there it's still some times hard to believe. I can't wait till they get here and I can hold them, I am sure it will be real then, but I will miss them being in my belly. I guess all of us do, but definitely don't want to be pregant forever.

As far as their delivery date, it has been a busy couple of days to clarify all the details. December 11th, 2008 @ 6:00 am is when I am officially scheduled for my c-section. Like I said before the girls will be 32 weeks that day. Randall still had some questions and felt surprised about the decision so we had the nurse have the doctor come talk to us again on Sunday evening. He was able to ask her the questions he needed to and now feels better about the whole thing. On Sat evening Randall, my mom and I went to the NICU for the tour. It was awesome. The charge nurse showed us their Level 3(highest level of care) and Level 2(stepdown unit) areas and all that had to go with it. Randall had so many great questions and she answered them all. It really relieved a lot of the anxiety I had about that process. They very supportive of family being present as much as they want. The only time we can't visit is during change of shift, but the nurse did warn me that I need to take care of myself too, especially right after the c-section. And my mom reminded me I won't be able to drive for a while. So I guess I will have to depend on others for a while. Because each child is different we still don't know what our girls will have to face when they are born, but I at least feel more prepared on what to expect. Yesterday I spoke with the neonatologist who will be on the day the girls are born. The doctor recommended I talk with them one more time about the differences between 32 weeks and 34 weeks. The four requirements for the girls to be able to leave the NICU will be 1)off oxygen, 2) weight at least 4.5 lbs, 3)able to feed by bottle or breast and 4) maintain their temperature. These are the main complications with both 32 and 34 week old babies and the doctor said we would need to expect that at 32 weeks it will take them a little longer to get through the process than a 34 week baby. There can be a lot of other complications, but we will not go into those details at this time.