Still not ready yet…

Edited to add:  If this is the first you’re hearing about Kelly being pregnant, please go and read the first post I wrote about it HERE to get up to speed on the situation.  Thanks.

By way of an update on the twins… Kelly’s water broke around 0330 in the morning on Monday the 7th, which led to a very interesting week.  That day was 26.6 weeks along (Nota bene: .x for gestation indicate the number of additional days into the week in question, not a normal decimal percentage)  A friend came by and picked up Maddie, which was wonderful.  It meant we didn’t have to keep her in the stroller in the hospital until my parents arrived.  Kelly got moved into her own room, and we waited on my parents to get there.

Once they got there, I ran back to the house to pick up some stuff for Kelly (and to tame the disaster after the weekend, more on that later…), while mom & dad ran into Stafford to retrieve Maddie.  Did I mention we traded in the Explorer on the 5th?  There was an issue with the radio on the new car (which had just been replaced, according to the CARFAX), so the dealer sent it back over to their Ford store to get that fixed, and we had a loaner car in the driveway.  Kelly had been looking forward to driving out and picking up the new ride during the middle of the week, since she’d get to play with all the bells & whistles on the hour+ ride back from the dealership.  Because we had test-driven a nearly identical model the previous weekend, I did the test drive with the salesman alone, so we wouldn’t have to swap the carseat over… which meant Kelly hadn’t driven, or even ridden in the new car. Oh, I should mention we bought the car in Front Royal, which is 63 miles from the house.  Murphy is a bastard.

House disaster partially averted, dogs fed, and items retrieved, I headed back down to Fredericksburg.  Which brings me to another thing: Kelly was admitted to Mary Washington Hospital in Fredericksburg instead of Stafford Hospital in Stafford… because MW has the better NICU, which is an important detail at 26.6 weeks gestation. They confirmed via ultrasound that it was Baby A’s (the non-viable twin) sac that had ruptured, so Kelly would be there a while.  They gave her a round of magnesium (fetal neural protectant, a fun drug to be on), steroids (to spur lung development), and IV antibiotics for 3 days, followed by oral for 4 more days (to ward off infection, obviously).  First 48 hours would be crucial, since once she cleared that hurdle, the odds of going weeks, rather than days, went up significantly. Two days passed, with no significant issues.  Okay, next goal is 28 weeks, then 32, then 34… long story short, after 8 days in the hospital, she was allowed to come home.  The perinatologist and her OB team decided that since the primary residual risk was to Baby A, Kelly’s mental health benefit from coming home would be well worth the (still present, but now slightly decreased) risk.  My parents stayed until the 19th, at which point Kelly’s mom flew in to take a 2-week rotation.  My mom will be taking the train back up from NC next week, so we’ll have continuous Maddie-care on hand.

Still. Not. Ready. Yet.

Being before 30 weeks, we hadn’t done any serious house prep, or packed go-bags, or any of that stuff.  Murphy, being the bastard that he is, had the new-to-us car in the shop, and the carseat in the wrong vehicle (read: in the loaner) on the morning in question. No go bags, barely a list (though I didn’t forget the camera this time…), and zero expectation that we’d be where we were on a random Monday morning at <0600hrs.  We had spent the weekend driving back and forth to Front Royal to sort out buying the car, and so the house needed some help.  The list goes on.

So where are we now?  Kelly is on modified bed rest here at home.  Bed, shower, eat meals, sit on the couch, lather, rinse, repeat.  She’s very specifically not to lift more than 10#, so the cat is okay, but Maddie is not.  She has to take her temperature and check for belly pain twice daily, to keep an eye out for infections.  She’s only allowed to drive to the doctor, and she has OB appointments every Tuesday, and perinatologist appointments every Friday.  Nana, Punkin, and Baba (my mom, dad, and her mom) have been extremely helpful.  While Kelly was in the hospital Mom just took care of figuring out meals and taking care of Maddie, and since Kelly’s been home, she’s able to help her mom some with meal planning.  Since her mom has commissary privileges, she can go onto Quantico and take care of shopping for groceries, which has taken one other rock out of my rucksack.  We haven’t been going to church, because while I’d normally see Maddie catching things in the petri dish that is the children’s church area as a part of having kids, we can’t afford for her (and then subsequently us) to get sick.  With Kelly having to be hyper-vigilant about spiking a fever, and with odds being high that Baby B will end up in the NICU for some period of time, we can’t afford even a case of the sniffles.  That’s not been an optimal situation, but Kelly’s MOPS group has been wonderful, and my boss stopped in the hospital with flowers from the office while she was there… support has been great all around.

We’re past the 48-hour mark, and the 28 week mark, and on Tuesday will be halfway from there to 32.  Easter at home is kinda weird, but given the situation I’m glad we’re all home and not running back and forth to the NICU.  We’ll pass Maddie’s birthday tomorrow, and Kelly’s next week… Ever since we first found out it was twins, and we knew that 35 weeks is the average… Kelly just wanted to get to May.  She was hoping we could line up Feb/Mar/Apr/May birthdays, among other things.  May is still the goal, but for different reasons now.  Once she hits 34 weeks, regardless of how everything else is, she’ll be back in the hospital for the duration.  We’d appreciate your prayers that everything progresses fine here at home until we can get to 26 April, and that she can go two more weeks once there.