Ultrasound, 23w6d

A mixed bag at the perinatologist’s office today.

The good news is that my cervix remains shut like an iron fist. Despite the beating the twins insist on giving it every day, it’s still greater than four centimeters. This is a very good thing. My husband suggested it might be a whole new kind of kung fu (Iron Cervix!), but we’ll have to see if that catches on.

Both babies are doing well, heartrates are good, fluid levels are good, no one seems to be in any distress. My baby girl A, though, is still quite a little peanut. She’s very active, which is a good thing, and everything looks to be developing well, but she’s growing slowly. She put on about 5 oz. since our last visit, making her only 1 lb 1 oz., which is about the 17-18th percentile for babies of her gestational age. Her brother, baby boy B, put on 8 oz to become 1 lb 7 oz, and is in the 48th percentile. He’s measuring a day ahead, gestationally speaking, and she’s measuring just over a week and a half behind. Not horrible, but not encouraging, either. I’m now going to be seeing the perinatologist every two weeks instead of 3-4, to keep tabs on her progress. If we get to 28 weeks and she isn’t really catching up, they’ll likely start giving me steroid shots to speed up lung development in case they need to come early. But as long as she keeps growing (even if it isn’t as fast as I’d like) and fluid levels are good and she isn’t in distress, we’ll just keep cooking as long as possible.

Baby boy B’s kidney didn’t improve from last week, and in fact has now slightly more fluid (though he’s also growing larger, so it’s not all bad), and is something we’ll still keep an eye on.

I like my perinatologist a lot, and I like that she’s really encouraging and not an alarmist. Yes, she said there may come a point where they want to hit me up with some steroids to help with lung development in case they need to come early, etc. But I like that she calmly says these things and then moves on to something more encouraging. I don’t want her to pretend everything is peachy when it’s not, but I also don’t want her to freak me out more than necessary. She strikes a good balance, I think.

That’s the update from here. I’ll try to post pictures when I get home tonight. Got a few halfway decent face shots, though no 3D. Maybe another time.

Edited, finally. Here are the pictures!
A face shot of baby A:

And baby B with his arm in front of his face. It’s like one of those pictures at the mall. If you stare at it in just the right way, it looks like a sailboat. I swear.

We also got a good picture of the double-breech… two heads are better than one!