10/10 The ultrasound. Beating hearts?

10/10

The ultrasound. Today was the day to find out if any or all of the three little hearts started beating in this past week. After waiting for over an hour in the room to be seen (our file had gotten buried and forgotten for a little while), the long wait was over. The midwife saw first only one viable pregnancy, with the one gestational sac being empty and the other not quite having a normal development in it. Then she saw two. Two normal developing babies, with heartbeats. both measuring 6 weeks, 5 days. The third sac was empty. This brought sadness and relief to me. Two! I could handle two (after the shock of three last week). One parent for each tiny little one. We know lovely families who have twins and have made it just fine. Two. That meant I could do Dr. Luke's twin diet instead of her triplet diet (which allows for me gaining less weight related directly to my BMI … I worry about weight and while I will do everything to protect these babies and get them as healthy a birth weight and gestational age as possible, the idea of needing to gain that weight for triplets is a little overwhelming for me.) Dave meanwhile was thinking very similar thoughts. And then came the midwife…. "Wait a second! I DO see something in that one." Three. On a closer look and different angle, we now saw three healthy little ones, with beating hearts, each measuring 6 weeks and 5 days—right on schedule. They measured .84, .82, and .80.  Back to three. Here we go, Lord!

During the office visit, I felt relatively peaceful, having gone through utter shock the week prior. But later that day, I realized (much to my surprise), that I felt depressed. Maybe it's the pregnancy hormones on triple dose… I had nothing specific coming to mind, I just felt depressed. As I tried to explain this to Dave, I laughed as I realized that in the past week, I'd very quickly gone from shock, to denial, to anger, to depression, and now all that was left was acceptance. :) (If you leave out bargaining. :)) And why on earth am I going through the stages of grief with a very wanted pregnancy?? Maybe it's just stages of shock and adjustment.  (Later, in reading Dr. Luke's book, I read that mothers of multiples, "often journey through five fairly predictable stages: shock, denial, anxiety/anger/depression, bargaining, and acceptance/adaption…essentially the same five stages of grief first described by Dr. Elisabeth Kubler-Ross (herself a triplet)."