Dear Aunt Chrissy, We appreciate the sacrifices you made to help bring us all into the world. Hope you enjoyed your birthday at Riverside Spa! We love you and enjoyed cuddling with you today. Love Always, Charlie, Tommy, Grace, & Haddie Today was the most exciting and best day of our lives!! Meeting our 4 little ones was surreal - but they are all here and it definitely feels real. Charles Kortlandt was born first weighing 6 lbs even. Thomas Sellman then arrived a short time after his brother and is our biggest baby - weighing 6 lbs 2 oz. Grace LaVelle was next - weighing in at 5 lbs 7 oz. And last (but certainly not least- except in terms of weight) was Hadley Somei! She was only 5 lbs 4 oz. We are all exhausted, but our hearts are full! Looking forward to day two as a family of six. Good night!! It looks like we are definitely going to be able to have our quadruplets (carried in two separate wombs) have the same birthday after all. Tomorrow will be 38 weeks for both of our pregnancies and we have our C-sections scheduled! Our original times were 9:30am and 11am - which meant we would've needed to be at the hospital by 7:30am to get prepped. So we planned to meet with our attorney at 7am to sign the legal documents to give us parental rights over the boys that my sister is carrying. Today we got a call from Dr. Lindauer's nurse that we were moved up to 7:30am and 9:30am - which was fine, except that we figured asking the attorney to meet us at 5am was a little much. We also had some confusion this afternoon about the timing of the legal documents and whether the hospital would recognize us as parents when the legal documents (signed by the judge) were returned to the hospital. Long story short, the social workers at the hospital assured me that they will work to ensure that everyone on the nursing staff understands that we are the parents as soon as our attorney brings back the signed documents. Whew! ;) Although we will have to be at the hospital at 5:30am tomorrow morning, I'm definitely excited that we will get to meet all of our kiddos a little sooner in the day. We also worked it out so that our attorney will meet us at 6:45am to have us sign the documents. So glad it all worked out - because it was getting a little stressful earlier this afternoon! Last night my hubby and I went to see one more movie before our little ones arrive. We saw "Captain Phillips" - which we both really enjoyed. Today was our last days of work for awhile. I will be taking 12 weeks off and my husband is going to take 2.5 weeks off. It was definitely fun setting my "out-of-office" message before I left the office this morning. Everyone at work is definitely anxious to hear the good news tomorrow! Our hospital bags have finally been packed and we are trying to wrap our heads around what a BIG day tomorrow is going to be. A life-changing day to say the least. By this time tomorrow, our 2 sons and 2 daughters will be here.
By this time tomorrow, our parents will have 4 new grandchildren and the rest of the family will have 4 more cousins or nieces/nephews to love. By this time tomorrow, all of our doubts about whether we'd ever be parents will be washed away as we hold our little ones. We appreciate everyone's thoughts and prayers of support! Your texts, phone calls, and Facebook posts/messages have been overwhelming and are much appreciated. We know that many of you have been waiting a long time for a day where we would be so lucky to welcome one baby into the world - never imagining that we could be blessed with 4! We are so blessed and thankful for the 4 precious gifts from God. Praying and hoping that all of the babies arrive safely!! No babies showed up on Sunday and they only have a few hours left on this Monday night to make an appearance. It looks like we just might be able to follow our delivery plan on the 24th - only 3 more sleeps away! ;)
When Joby and I were heading downstairs on Sunday morning, my parents were already down in the kitchen. Joby told me to wait at the top of the stairs and turned to rush down the stairs. He yelled, "Hey! I think Annie's water just broke!" as he turned the corner at the bottom of the stairs. My parents jumped out of their chairs and then Joby told him he was just kidding. ;) And my mom said, "Wow.... we really do need to be ready, don't we?" Luckily, they were good sports about it. We made it through the rest of our Sunday without any more fake-false-alarms. We went to church for the last time before the babies arrive. During the service my sister leaned over and asked how soon we were going to bring the babies to church. I told her that I was going to take them to "Trunk or Treat" next Sunday. ;) After lunch at Burger King, I took a nap during the Bengals game, worked on the family calendars, went to get my eyebrows waxed, and ran a few errands. Somehow, I think this upcoming Sunday is going to be so different from yesterday! :) I also had to get up at 4AM for a work call for one of my projects yesterday morning - it was my last one for awhile. Not saying that I may not be up at 4AM anymore - but it won't be for work! ;) Maternity Photos: Our wonderfully talented next-door neighbors posted the pictures of our maternity session from Saturday morning. We love how they turned out. We also appreciate the time they took to write up a blog post telling our story from their perspective next-door. When you check out the pictures via this link, you're going to think they take unconventional maternity photos like this all the time. ;) But I assure you that this is the first time they've done a maternity session with 3 people instead of just 2. Thanks, Mark & Tracy!! So crazy to think that this is our last weekend without our babies being in the world! It looks like we've made it thru another day - unless someone goes into labor tonight! ;) Yesterday our segment aired as part of the "Bethenny" talk show. We were very pleased with how it turned out and our family/friends were super excited about the most generous gifts from JCPenney & Huggies! :) This morning our neighbors (who are amazing photographers) took some maternity pictures of us at a local park. It was a little chilly and started to sprinkle towards the end, but I think the pictures are going to turn out great. We can't wait to see the pictures! Thank you, Mark & Tracy!!!
So even though we are 37 weeks & 2 days along- neither Chrissy nor I have packed a hospital bag. My husband and I have talked about packing one for awhile, but never seem to get to it. We said we were going to do it today - but my sister told us not to. Her thinking is that if we pack our bags, the babies will come! ;) I'm usually a last-minute packer anyway, so we're going to go with her approach. Hopefully we'll both be packing a bag on the night of the 23rd. We did do a little cleaning in our room today. It's kinda become the dumping ground for awhile - so it feels good to have it cleared out and more organized. I also went thru my closet and took out all of the summer/spring maternity clothes that I won't be wearing anymore. Still amazed that I made it thru this whole pregnancy and only bought two pairs of shorts!! Thanks to Tracy, Katie, Sara, Clev, Katie, Kristin, Davina, Chrissy, & Heather for all of their maternity clothes. I packed up most of them today - except for some fall clothes that seem like they will work until I get back into normal clothes. I'm excited to pass the bins of maternity clothes on to the next pregnant friend!! Tonight we celebrated Wendel's 5th birthday with family & friends at a local gymnastics gym. All of the kids had a great time running around, jumping on the trampoline, & being thrown into the cheese pit by Joby! ;) Good night!! Amazingly, all of our little babies have made it to 37 weeks! I would've probably bet that either the babies would be here by now, or that we'd be on bed rest. But that is definitely not the case. I was teasing my sister for suggesting that we schedule our appointment for the 17th - because she had meetings on the 16th at work. I remember saying something like, "If the babies aren't here, I doubt that you're going to be out and about going to meetings." But she definitely made it to all of her meetings on the 16th. Those big sisters are always right, aren't they? ;) I guess I just assumed if they were still in us - that we'd be put on bed rest to try to keep them in longer. However, it seems like the only bed rest we will have had on this journey is our two days of bed rest back in February following the embryo transfers!
Our appointments with Dr. Lindauer yesterday went well - our weights are still going up and our blood pressures are still holding nice and steady. Last week, I was measuring to be 40 weeks pregnant and Chrissy was measuring at 41 weeks pregnant. The measurement is based on singleton pregnancy - so they expect us to be ahead of schedule. Since twins do have a risk of their growth being slowed (due to lack of space) - Dr. Lindauer is just looking to see that we are growing. Well, don't you worry - because we have grown in the past week. I'm now measuring to be 43 weeks pregnant and Chrissy is measuring at 44 weeks! Even though she didn't check to see how dilated we were last week, she wanted to check us - since we're only a week out. I'm now at 1cm (last week I was barely 1cm) and she said Baby Girl A is pretty low. Chrissy was at 1-2cm last week and she's now at 4cm. Again, doesn't mean a whole lot in terms of when the babies will arrive. But it's not surprising that Chrissy's more dilated since this is her 3rd pregnancy and her body knows the drill. We are both about 70% effaced. Dr. Lindauer just told us to just take it easy until the 24th! ;) We actually have some pretty good reasons to try to keep these babies in through this weekend - if not the 24th!
We are definitely feeling more and more pregnant these last few weeks - but nothing too major to complain about. Chrissy says that she is sometimes feeling some Braxton-Hicks contractions - but nothing very regular. I still am not sure if I've had any or not. Sometimes I feel cramping going on - but that's about it. I can definitely tell that I'm getting bigger as it's harder to get in/out of bed and I feel like I'm moving around just a little slower these days. When I try to get of the couch by leaning forward, my belly is definitely getting in the way. We've also both still been sleeping pretty good, too. Although we have to get up to pee, we are both REALLY god at falling back asleep. ;) Our feet (and my hands) are definitely continuing to swell. I've been wearing flip-flops to work for the past couple of weeks. If we have C-sections, I think we may have to take our rings off - but I'm not sure how it's going to be possible to get my rings off at this point. Overall, we've both been blessed with really smooth and easy twin pregnancies. Happy Birthday, Grandma! Yesterday (Oct 17th) would've been my Grandma's 91st birthday. I'm sure that my grandpa planned something nice for them up in heaven. I love being an October baby - just like Grandma! Hopefully they've heard the good news up there and are anxiously awaiting great-grandchildren #9-12. :) We have a newborn photo session for our little quads tentatively scheduled for 11am on Oct 30th - assuming everyone gets home from the hospital by then. ;) Our photographer is the little sister of my dear friend, Casey... who passed away in 1997 in the fall of our senior year. It means so much to me to have Taylor photographing our kids.
Good Evening! :) No babies yet - all 4 are still warm and cozy in their wombs. I still can't believe we've made it this far. Hoping that each day we keep the babies in will help them to be stronger and ready for their entrance into the world. My parents have been wondering why twins are delivered sooner than 40 weeks - if they don't start to arrive on their own. I stumbled across a couple articles today that talked about why it is recommended to deliver twins sooner than 40 weeks. Towards the end of the pregnancy, twins will typically run out of space and their growth will start to slow down - compared to a singleton baby. The longer that they stay in the womb - the higher the risk of their growth to continue to slow down, which can sometimes lead to complications. So the recommended practice is to deliver them sooner - so that they can continue to grow outside of the womb and avoid any further complications. We have an appointment with Dr. Lindauer tomorrow - it will be our last one before the babies arrive!! Tuesday Interview with Bethenny: On Tuesday morning, we had our interview with Bethenny via Skype during one of her show tapings. Although the show wasn't airing live - she was there with her studio audience, so we had to pretty much act like it was live. Even though we did the interview via Skype, they had a cameraman come to our house (freelancer from Hilliard) and set-up his camera above our laptop. The producers explained that sometimes the Skype feed can be unreliable or go in/out - so they like to have the cameraman's footage as back-up, in case they want to swap out the Skype footage for the actual show when it is aired. It was interesting to get a glimpse of the chaotic behind-the-scenes world of a TV show. Before the taping started, we were connected to the show via Skype and could hear lots of behind-the-scenes conversations of the crew. Sometimes they were talking to us and it was a little hard to follow with all of the other conversations going on at the same time. It took some time for us to get the "shot" set-up correctly - we were set-up directly facing our kitchen and it seemed like it was approved by somebody. But then a little bit later, someone else must've come in the room and didn't like how the microwave was right in-between us. So we had to shift our chairs so that it wasn't in-between us anymore. ;) They also did audio and video checks with us. Although we could see/hear them fine in real-time, there seemed to be a little delay in them getting our Skype feed. We had a few conversations with the producer prior to Tuesday morning and she could not stress enough the importance of us being very animated. She said that with Skype interviews, it's sometimes hard for the emotions to come across - so she asked us to be "bigger" than we normally would be. On Sunday, she mentioned that the show had some gifts for the babies and that it was important to have a big reaction! As many of you know, I learned at my bridal shower back in 2005 that I get very nervous (some may even say awkward) opening gifts in-front of my friends/family. I think it's just everyone staring at me and me feeling like I have to give a good reaction. Anyway, I definitely had a little more practice at all of the baby showers this summer - but still feel a little stressed about opening gifts in front of people. So now, I have a producer telling me that they're going to give us something and asking me for a good reaction.... talk about stress! ;) Although we won't be the first segment in the show - they sometimes tape out of order and they said that they were going to do us first. So we heard the theme music starting and then could see Bethenny standing in the aisle of her studio audience waiting to get the green light to get started. She gave a nice intro about infertility struggles and then they showed the little video package that they put together from the interviews they did with us back on October 4th. We were able to see the video package via Skype and I was pleased with what they put together. Then it went back to Bethenny and she said that Chrissy and I were joining them via Skype and it was go-time! The actual interview with Bethenny was kind of a blur - I'm anxious to see the segment when it airs. She asked us a bunch of questions and we did our best to respond with big/emotional responses. At the end, she did present us with some most generous gifts for the babies. It helped that I was truly surprised with how generous the gifts were - so I can only hope that my reaction was big enough for the producers of the show. We haven't told anyone about the gifts because we think it will be more fun for family/friends to see it on the show. The show is going to air on Friday (Oct 18th) - so check your local listings to see when it airs in your city. After our segment was done, we had to shoot some B-roll with the cameraman. I think the purpose of this footage is just in case the editors at Bethenny want to use any of it in the little video package that has us telling our story up to a certain point. They don't need us to be talking in any of these shots - it's more for the video of us in various scenarios at home. Since the cameraman was instructed to not shoot our pregnant bellies and to have us be serious (or deep in though) - we figured that this footage would be used as we are telling our before-the-great-baby-news part of the story. Just to give you an idea, he had a couple shots of Joby and I sitting at the dining room table - sipping on coffee/water, looking out the window, looking at each other, reaching out to hold hands, etc.... Then he did some of us on the couch, Chrissy in the kitchen at our island (thinking about being our gestational carrier perhaps), Chrissy and I on the patio table, and then Joby walking down the street. So awkward and unnatural - but I guess that's what they needed! It will be interesting to see if they use any of those shots on Friday. Overall, I think it was a good experience for us - though we had to do some juggling with our schedules to make things work. We are glad to be sharing our story on the national-level and grateful for the gifts they gave our babies. And I'm hoping they can give us a DVD of the show - so that we can share it with the kiddos when they are older. We did have to sign an exclusivity agreement with them, which is good for 3 months from the date the show airs. I really doubt the offers are going to start pouring in - but somehow, I have a feeling we are going to be quite busy for the next 3 months anyway! ;) The Advertiser Tribune (our hometown newspaper): When we went home to Tiffin for my mom's retirement dinner back on September 20th, a reporter from our hometown newspaper came over to my parents' house to interview us about our story. We weren't sure when it was going to be publish - but it turns out that it was published on Tuesday, 10/15. Here is a link to the article, if you'd like to check it out. I'm going to have to see if I can get some copies of it. I'll need at least 4 for the babies' baby books!
In closing I'd like to shout-out a "Happy 5th Birthday" to Wendel Kun Doggy Dog! I'm glad the babies stayed in - so that you don't have to share your birthday, though I know you would've been okay with it. Let's just hope they stay in through the weekend - so we can all be at your birthday party on Saturday. I'd also like to ask for prayers for those going through tough times - God knows what they need. Well, it looks like we've made it through another day of keeping these babies in. :) If they stay in until the 24th, we only have one more weekend before they arrive. Although it is kinda exciting to think they could start to make their move at any moment - would LOVE to know whether they're going to arrive on their own terms! After being there when my sister gave birth to her two boys - I definitely have always been curious to see how I would handle the labor and delivery process and probably always imagined that I would be doing it the same way that she did. But on the other hand, knowing that there can be more complications trying to deliver twins - experiencing a C-section on the 24th and having all of our little ones arrive on the same day - sounds pretty good, too. I can be somewhat indecisive at times - so I guess it's good that our current plan leaves both as possible options. As long as they arrive safely, that's all that matters!
On Saturday, my sister and I were out running errands together. Typically when we are together - we're with friends/family that know the story - so we don't typically have a lot of questions to answer. But since we're both VERY pregnant - we definitely drew a little more attention in the check-out from the cashiers. Depending on the types of questions they asked - they received varying levels of details about our story. Most would just say something like, "Wow - you're both pregnant!" And then ask each of us when we were due or whether we were sisters. The lady at Babies 'R Us asked if we knew what we were having - so I responded with "Two girls!" and Chrissy said, "Two boys!" When she followed up asking if twins ran in our family - then I ended up giving her the whole story. We definitely blew her mind - but she was very sweet about it. We hit up quite a few stores during our outing and pretty much had to hit up the restrooms at every other store! As some of you know, my sister was on the "One Born Every Minute" show - when she gave birth to her 2nd son, Oliver. We decided to watch it on Saturday afternoon after we ran our errands. And both us were just crying throughout the whole episode - especially right when little Oliver was born - screaming his head off. ;) Another couple on their episode, had an unresponsive baby girl after birth. Even though we both knew that she survived - we couldn't stop crying! Seeing the tiny little babies made me realize that I'm still not sure I really believe that we're going to have 4 little ones of our very own.... very soon! But I think I'll believe it when I see them - can't wait to meet them. :) |