Twenty-nine weeks down. A maximum of nine weeks remain until the babies will be evicted from their cozy home. We are officially in the single-digits part of the countdown now, y’all!

Babies are the Size of: Two pineapples. I LOVE PINEAPPLES. I should go buy a pineapple today because I would eat the hell out of that pineapple. I should buy TWO.

How I’m Doing: Well, I officially have a temporary disability parking tag, so that’s how I’m doing. Walking for any distance is no bueno right now in terms of intense, angry Braxton Hicks contractions, so my doctor did the paperwork for me and now here we are. The reason we checked on the application form: “Unable to walk more than 200 yards without stopping to rest.” As someone who values my identity as a very fit, active, long-distance runner, well, you can imagine how I feel about this. More importantly, however, I am doing what I need to do to keep these babies cooking, so let’s focus on that.

Baby B

Baby A

Ultrasounds: What do you mean you can’t see what anything is in these pictures?! It’s clear as day! Heh. Yeah, I can’t see anything either. The twins are so big now and so crowded in there that their little bodies are all curled up and overlapping and it’s impossible to really get a sense of what you’re looking at, at least for a lay person like me. But there above is Baby B’s femur (overlapping his own torso and his sister’s) and Baby A’s foot, which is constantly kicking me right below my right ribs.

At this point the main purpose of our ultrasounds is to measure the babies’ growth. As far as I know, we want to make sure they’re both still growing (not restricted by space, for example) and that one isn’t outpacing the other. The latter is a bigger concern with twins who are sharing a placenta and ours aren’t because they’re fraternal twins, but they still like to check this. They also check amniotic fluid levels and heartbeats. All of that was looking great!

The babies are measuring a little ahead of schedule at 3lbs 4 oz for Baby A (our girl) and 3lbs 1oz for Baby B (our boy), which means they’re measuring at 30-31 weeks and in the 60s for percentile. Not too shabby, babies! The ultrasound tech also told me that Baby A has, apparently, a huge head. It’s measuring 33 weeks and in the 97th percentile. With twins and other multiples, Baby A is so named because he/she is the baby closest to the cervix, who therefore will be born first in a vaginal delivery. So. Big old head on Baby A. Fun.

The caveat here, of course, is that ultrasound measurements like these are notoriously unreliable. Basically every woman I know who has been pregnant has said that her baby’s weight/size estimates were waaaaay off from what the baby actually weighed at birth. In this particular case, with Baby A’s head being down, my tech had a difficult time and needed to maneuver around for quite a while to get the head measurement, which suggests to me it might not be all that accurate.

When you are over 35 and pregnant with twins, you get A LOT of ultrasounds.

Doctor’s Visit: My doctor’s first words when she saw me post-ultrasound: “You grow some big babies!” Okay then. She says it has to do with maternal height — I’m 5’9″ and the kiddos have a lot of room to grow in there, so they do.

We also talked about delivery. Right now, both babies are head down, which is ideal for trying a vaginal birth. If Baby A is breech or transverse on delivery day, a C-section will be necessary. If Baby A is head down but Baby B is breech or transverse, though, we are in a bit of a gray area. My doctor told me she wouldn’t necessarily be comfortable trying a breech extraction by herself (where they basically reach up in there and grab the baby’s foot!), but she would be if she had either of two other doctors in the practice to call for back-up (there are many doctors in the practice, but only two who are super experienced with breech extractions on a second twin). So. It looks like in that case, a C-section might be likely to happen as well. I am okay with it either way. But, much like everything else in life, I just wish I knew ahead of time!

Coming Up: We have Fall Break this week, which means a four-day weekend! Hopefully we will have time to get some progress made on the last few remaining baby things, most of which I can do sitting down:

• Finish the bird mobile
• Find a spot in our bedroom for the Pack-N-Play bassinet thingy
• Learn how to properly install the car seats
• Hang up art in the nursery
• Touch up the paint on the changing table
• Go on a date or something!

Realistically, we might get half of those things done. We’ll see!