Son of a....

Ugh, I'm so pissed.  I made it almost 34 weeks without a single stretch mark, and must have gotten a bit cocky about that, because they have shown up.  All weekend, the underside of my stomach (to the left of my navel, and area I cannot see) was itching like crazy.  I finally got out some mirrors to check it out, and there they were, two little stretch marks.  Its nothing too terrible yet, but I'm sure this is just the start.  Apparently all the "lubing up" and excessive water drinking didn't help.  I thought I'd be lucky, considering my mom did not get stretch marks, but doesn't seem so.  Oh well!!

I've also hit hard into the "third trimester insomnia".  I've had to start taking a Benadryl at night to sleep, but even last night that didn't help.  I think I got a combined total of 30 minutes of sleep.  Its making today pretty rough!

Other than that, there really isn't much going on right now (just trying to stay off my feet... have to make it through this week to stay on track with my FMLA plans).  We had planned to take care of a lot of baby related items this weekend, but ended up just spending time with Layla.  She was doing really good this weekend, but got sick this morning.  The hardest part for us right now is the waiting.  We have no idea when the cancer is really going to hit her.  It could be tonight, it could be next month.  Its causing a lot of stress, both because the idea of her passing away breaks our heart, but also because the babies are expected in about a month.  It really is the worst timing we could ever have.  It wouldn't be easy regardless, but the timing definitely makes it even harder.  Our biggest fear is that I will go into labor right at the same time she has another collapse. 

32w4d

Today was my last of the "every-other-week" appointments.  I graduated today to weekly appointments.  And, I also graduated to weekly ultrasounds starting the week of October 11th.  So I'm going to be very busy with appointments from here on out, until the boys are here (and, I guess, even after they are here, considering all the pediatrician visits in our future!).

Both boys were doing good.  Their heartbeats were in the 150s-160s, and they were kicking at the dopplar, which was fun.  My doctor put my mind at ease about the whole mucus plug incident, saying most likely it was only part of it, and even if it was all of it, it doesn't mean I need to worry.  She laughed and asked if I reached in the toilet to get it, to which I had to blush... even though I didn't do that, I definitely thought about it for about 5 minutes.  Apparently, I am not the only one, which makes me feel like less of a crazy person.

The only item of concern today was my slightly elevated blood pressure.  It wasn't terrible, but it was definitely higher than it has been.  I asked if it could be due to our Layla woes (which was hard enough to get out without crying), and she said that most likely it is.  I also expressed concern that the boys weren't moving as much the past day or two, and that I was worried my stress was effecting them. She said it is probably more likely that I am just not noticing it as much, or that my being more active is keeping them asleep.  She said try not to worry, as if I am already upset and stressed, I don't need to make it any worse.

And for those who are curious, we were able to pick up Layla and bring her home yesterday afternoon.  Our vet was great, and really spent the time with us to talk about what happens next.  He does not expect her to make it past a month, and most likely, a new rupture could happen within the week.  We were giving a medicine to help with blood clotting, and it comes with a red "emergency" pill.  They said it may be able to help for a small leak, like she had Tuesday night, but would still be delaying the inevitable.  She was in good spirits when we picked her up, but some of it was probably adrenaline.  She went to sleep quickly after we got home, and was not quite herself this morning.  I know she is feeling bad, which just breaks my heart.  Eric and I are just trying to spend as much time with her as possible before its too late, and to spoil her to pieces.  We know how much she hates the vet (considering how many surgeries and other visits she has had over her 8 years of life), so we are looking into mobile vets that come to your house.  We want her to be in a place she loves when she has to go.

Bad Night Leads to Bad Day

First I want to preface that this is 100% not baby related (at least not in the traditional sense).

As many of you know from my posts over the spring, Eric's and my fur-baby, Layla, had cancer.  We found a mass tumor on her spleen that had ruptured.  As a result, she had emergency surgery in the spring to remove her spleen, and spent the next 10 weeks receiving chemotherapy. 

Over the past few months, she has been doing really well.  All of her fur has grown back from the chemo, and her activity has very much improved.  But last night, she took a bad turn.  At around 10:30PM, she essentially collapsed.  We rushed her to the emergency vet, ran several tests, and stayed until almost 2AM, but still didn't have any answers other than her blood pressure was severely low. 

This morning, her oncologist ran some additional tests and found that there is now a mass on her liver.  It appears like she had a small rupture last night, which caused her to bleed internally and for her blood pressure to drop.  We knew the cancer spreading was a possibility since the original mass has ruptured, but we were hoping the chemo would delay the onset. 

Right now, she is doing OK.  They think the rupture was small enough that it seems to have healed itself, but it is very likely this will happen again.  It could be tonight, it could be next month.  We decided after the chemo that we could not afford additional treatments, nor do we want to put her through that again.  As a result, all we can do right now is spend as much time as possible with her and make her comfortable.  Sometime in the near future we will have a very difficult decision to make.

We are picking her up at 3PM today and meeting with the oncologist to let him know what we have decided.  Please keep her in your thoughts!

Layla Update

I know I probably should have posted this on Thursday when we got the results, but its been crazy busy this weekend...  Hubby and I took an extended four day weekend to visit family for the holidays, which includes lots of travel and not very much time online.

With that said, I am happy (ecstatic really) to report that Layla is in remission!  For a quick, quick summary, we have spent the last several months with our beloved dog in chemo after a large aggressive tumor ruptured on her spleen.  She has been in rough shape.  I hate to say I feel like the chemo has aged her years.  She has lost hair on her face, back legs, and one small place on her side.  Her skin has also gotten darker.  Her energy level is nowhere near where it was.  She spent days after each treatment feeling miserable, and my heard just broke for her.  But it was all worth it to hear she is cancer free and clear.  There are no signs of any cancer present at this time.

Now, does that mean this is over?  No.  It sucks to say that the cancer most likely will come back at some point... it could be a year from now, it could be five years from now.  Only time will tell.  But we at least bought her some more time with us.  She will most likely be here when the boys are born and hopefully for some time after that.  If and when the cancer does come back, we will not intervene.  We would keep fighting for years and years if we could, but the reality is that we just do not have the money.  We honestly didn't have the money for the chemo treatments, but we made it work.  So if it comes back, we will just make her quality of life the best we can.

I feel the need to turn this post back around to a more positive note, so to reiterate... Layla is cancer free and we are beyond relieved, happy, thankful, etc, etc, etc!  Thanks everyone for keeping us and Miss Layla in your thoughts!!

Miss Layla and a Bump

Happy Hump Day!  I really stoked to skip out of work a little early today to go see Eclipse.  I feel like 90% of my friends already saw it last night at the midnight showing, but there is no way I could stay up until 2AM.  I go to be SO early these days. 

Tomorrow is another big day.  We have some follow up testing on Layla's chemo treatments to see how it went.  For those who do not know, several months ago, our dog Layla had to undergo emergency surgery to remove her spleen.  She had a large cancerous tumor on her spleen that had ruptured, and she was essentially bleeding internally.  Since the tumor had ruptured, she was at an increased risk of the cancer spreading quickly through the bloodstream, so Eric and I took a day to weigh our options and decided to proceed with the chemo.  The overall treatment was 10 weeks long, with treatments every other week (for a total of 5) and bloodwork/monitoring on the off-weeks.  Its been rough watching her go through it... about 2-3 days after treatment, she gets really down in the dumps, doesn't feel well, barely eats, and it last a couple days.  And as soon as she seems back to herself, its time for another treatment.  She also has been losing her hair, mostly on her face and back legs.  I feel so bad for her.  We really didn't want to ruin her quality of life, but the odds at the time of her surviving without the treatments was just a couple weeks to maybe a couple months.  If the treatment has worked, and she is in remission, she will hopefully be with us for another year or two. 

Alot of people think we are crazy for even proceeding with the treatments, and maybe we are, but we really couldn't sit back and do nothing.  I think, deep down, Eric just needed to know she would be around once the babies were born.  I think its because he feels like he will deal with  her death better if he has his children with him.  It was a huge cost to us, but we made the decision that it would be the last intervention we made.  If the cancer came back, or spread, we wouldn't do anything else but try to make her time with us happy and loving.

So everyone please keep your fingers crossed for our girl tomorrow.  She'll be getting an ultrasound and some other tests to check for residual cancer, and to see if it has spread.  We really hope she is in remission and will be with us for a while longer.  She really is our first child!

And on the baby front, this weeks bump shot for you.  Eric said I need to stop using my iPhone to take cheap mirror shots and just let him take them for me, so maybe they will improve going forward (but at least with the iPhone shots, I can cover my face... I feel like I am retaining tons of water there, my face feels swollen to me!).

I've been a bad blogger

Ever since I found out I am pregnant, I feel like I am terrible at blogging... updates just don't see to come as often as they did through the IF cycles, and I'd hate to think I'm coming on here just to whine about how crappy I feel... but anyway, here are a few updates with me.

Last weekend, the hubs and I walked in the March of Dimes "March for Babies" walk. I was REALLY nervous about this. I used to walk for miles and miles before getting pregnant, but ever since, I have just been too worn out, and I was so worried I would get halfway through the 4.5 mile walk and crash out. Not only did this not happen, but hubby and I finished as some of the first people. The walk itself was great. It was around Reston, VA, and Lake Anne, and beautiful. It would have been nice to be a few degrees warmer, but once we started going, everything was OK.

Our situation with Layla is ever changing. We decided, after LOTS of debate, to proceed with chemo. I'm not going to lie, it’s expensive, and likely only going to buy her another year or two, but hubby really wanted to know he did everything he could to help her before giving up. We agreed this was the last thing we could do, and if the cancer showed up elsewhere, we would not put her through additional surgeries and treatments. She had her first round this week, and will have a total of 5 over the next 10 weeks. Honestly, I think hubby just needed her to be here when the babies come, which is why he decided to go through with the treatments. She is in good spirits after the first round, hasn't been sick at all, so we hope she stays this way the whole time.

And lastly, the babies. As far as I know, the babies are doing great. Our last ultrasound was about a week ago, and they were right on target. I was getting a little nervous because my symptoms were changing. During weeks 5-8, I was miserable. Sick 24-7... Not necessarily throwing up, just sick all the time... and tired... I wasn't eating much at all. Then all of a sudden, right as Week 9 began, I started feeling great. No more sickness at all (or, well, BARELY… still some, but in comparison, it was barely noticeable). Still some exhaustion, but I was eating again, and it was great. I was so worried that it meant something was wrong, since I had expected it to stick around for a while longer... well, shame on me for worrying because today, it is back in full force. I've spent more of my day in the bathroom than at my actual desk. I am so hungry, but everything tastes and smells terrible. Ugh. I might try to bail out early and get back in the bed!

I've found being pregnant with twins makes hiding a pregnancy much harder... I feel like I look more pregnant than all the other pregnant (and further along) people around me. I even expressed this concern with my doctor who looked at me like I was crazy and said, "Well, you ARE having two babies…" I just needed to know it was normal, since all I read says you don't start to show until the second trimester.

Anyway, that’s all for now. I don't have another appointment until May 7th (2 weeks from today!!), which will be 11w5d. I can't wait to see how big they have gotten!

Puppy Update

This is again off topic, but being that Layla is basically our first child, I feel very inclined to discuss what is going on here. As you probably remember, last week was very trying for us as Layla had to have emergency surgery to remove her spleen after a tumor was found. She stayed in the hospital for 3 days, and finally came on late Thursday. She was pretty pitiful all weekend, but she has been coming around to her old self, and by today, she seems almost normal. She isn't allowed to go up and down stairs right now, so my hubby has been sleeping downstairs in the living room with her.

But right when everything seemed to be getting better, the biopsy results come back, and it's not good. The tumor was a Grade II malignant mast cell tumor, and its likely the cells have moved on to other places in her body well before we even found the tumor. We have to see an oncologist to determine what our next steps are, but even with chemo, it doesn't look like she will be around very much longer, likely only 6 months or so.

As you can imagine, my husband and I are devastated. I never in a million years would have thought Layla wouldn't be here to meet our babies and grow up with them. She is only 7 1/2 years old, and granted, has gone through a lot (doggie ACL surgery on both hind legs, mast cell tumors on her skin removed, pancreatitis, etc), but we felt like we still have several years with her. My husband is especially upset. He was given Layla at only 4 weeks old, and spent the Christmas vacation at home bottle feeding her. She fit in the palm of his hand, and now she is 80 lbs. They have been attached at the hip ever since, so much so that when we first started living together, she had a nice way of crawling between us at night and pushing me out of the bed at night so she could be in bed alone with him. But I must have grown on her after some time because she very much recognizes me as the mommy.

Please keep our baby girl in your thoughts, and us as we likely will have to make some difficult decisions in the coming months.

And in other news... insert sad face here :(

I wanted to mention this in my previous post, but it just became too long. I really wanted to share why we had been so busy lately.

This past weekend, while visiting family in Blacksburg, VA, our dog became very sick. She was very lethargic and weak, so we took her to a local animal hospital. They did blood work and decided she had auto immune disease. They sent us home with meds and said she should be better after a long stint on steroids. Well, after two days, she just seemed worse, so on Monday, we took her to her regular vet. They also did blood work, which showed elevated white blood cells, and low red blood cells and platelets. With this information, and because of some previous issues she had, they decided to do an abdominal x-ray, and found a tumor on her spleen. We were told to take her to a local surgery center for an ultrasound, which not only confirmed the diagnosis, but also shows the tumor was perforated and she was bleeding internally. As a result, she was rushed into surgery yesterday.

Both my husband and I are very stressed and sad over this situation. We were told they got the whole tumor, but had to remove her spleen. They will be biopsing the tumor to determine if it is malignant, and if so, she will likely have to start chemo treatments, since it could have spread on a microscopic level. There is no guarantee this will not come back.

My husband is especially upset by the news. He found Layla at 4 weeks old and had to bottle feed her. They have a bond that I have never before seen, and he is literally torn to pieces over it, especially being struck by the realization that she may not be with us much longer. We are praying and hoping for the best, but also expecting the worst. He is especially sad that our babies may never get to know her.

So please keep our baby girl in your thoughts. She truly is a big part of our family, and we really hope she improves soon.