Update from the Pahnke Twins

We're all doing okay! We had our weekly ultrasound yesterday. The babies are doing fine. They are just busy kicking each other and hanging out. Both babies are very good weights for 25 weeks. Baby Boy is 2 lbs (can you believe it!?!) and Baby Girl is 1 lb 13 oz., so just a wee bit smaller. Their hearts and insides all look good. Baby Boy was practicing taking big gulps of the surrounding water while we were watching him---then he made the biggest yawn. Each ultrasound it gets more difficult to understand what you are looking at because there are so many baby parts everywhere. You'll see four feet and it takes a while to figure out where each belongs. Yesterday they were both laying transverse along the botton of my belly with their heads together on the left side and thier feet kicking my right.

Here is a picture of their heads right next to eachother. It looks to me that they are conspiring together already. (I'm sorry the quality isn't as good as the other ultrasound pictures. I don't have a scanner in bed so I had to take a digital photo. :)



Bedrest is slowly going by. It is definitely one of the most difficult things I've had to do---I'm just not the type of girl to lay in bed all day long. Each day I get through feels like a real achievement and I cross out the day on my bedrest calander. My contractions are more under control though now with the medication and the bedrest, so we're doing something right. I'm allowed 4 contractions an hour and as long as I keep under that then the doctors are pretty happy. I also started the steroids to help develop the babies lungs in case they come sooner than later. I received my last shot this morning at the hospital. I think my doctor is still confident that we can hold off delivery---but wanted the extra precaution taken to ensure the best situation in any case. Tomorrow morning I check into the hospital to have a cerclage procedure (a cervical stitch) put in because my cervix has shortened to a dangerous length. The cerclage will be done with either an epidural or spinal and should help hold this pregnancy longer. My surgery is early in the morning and I hope to be home tomorrow night after they monitor me to make sure everything goes well. Ryan will be there with me and we're both confident everything will be just fine.

So there you go. That's pretty much all that is going on in the Pahnke house. Ryan is very very busy taking care of his babies and wife, working, studying for his bar exam, and keeping things running around here. Most days I worry most about him. We're thankful for everybodies thoughts and prayers and we are delighted to be expecting our two miracles. I'll try to keep everybody in the loop.

Love, Aurelie