Day 18

We had another ultrasound today. Unfortunately when you're inpatient, you're no longer a priority for scheduling these things advance, so you're pretty much at the mercy of the radiology staff. We tried to ask them to give us an afternoon slot so Sean could be there, but they came to get me at 11 a.m.

Both of these babies seem to turn and shift every time I have an ultrasound (which has been nearly every day lately because their hearts are hard to find for monitoring if they're always in a different spot) and this time Baby A is laying across my belly with her head on my left, her body across my belly button and her legs on my right side and angled down. Baby B is on my left side, head down, with Baby A's head resting on her belly. B's head is on my spinal cord and her feet are up by my rib cage on my right. So complicated!

Their measurements came back and I'm reluctant to read too much into them until our perinatologist can talk to us on Monday, but here are the basics:

We're currently at 28 weeks 2 days. Baby A is measuring 26w6d and B is 25w5d. This isn't unexpected - every ultrasound has showed them about 10 days behind. We even discussed with our perinatologist a few days ago and she said that she figured we'd come in small: "You guys aren't big yourselves. These babies aren't going to be in the 90th percentile". (I was 2 weeks late and still 7 lbs.) Baby A is about 2 lb 1 oz, B is 1 lb 12 oz. That's a 15% difference and they don't usually get concerned until at least 20%. A is in the 28th percentile and B is in the 15th percentile.

*Side note - How can I only have 4 pounds of baby inside me? I'm HUGE! And I have another 4-6 weeks left! And they're supposed to start gaining 1/2 lb a week soon....

The ultrasound also showed a few other things I haven't seen before. I saw their ears and even hair on their heads! The waxy coating on their skin sloughs off, sticks in their hair, and that's what shows up in the ultrasound. It's about 1/2 cm long, and, I'm guessing, blonde. We didn't get great shots because we ran out of time when the tech had to do the Doppler on the umbilical cords to see what the flow looked like.

Here is baby A's head laying on B's belly. See the hair at the back of the skull!