21Weeks 4 Days belly pic.

Happy Halloween. Sorry I look so tired in this picture.

Also, did I mention we found out today that baby C is a girl?

Tacos & grammar -- these are a few of my favorite things

First and foremost, for those who are playing along at home, Baby C is still of unknown gender. His/Her umbilical cord was right between his/her legs at the last scan on Thursday. We will try again this week. Abby was told to drink some OJ before the appointment, in order to perk the kiddos up a bit and facilitate some leg-opening action. Wow, that sounds bad. Well, this may be the first and last time we intentionally try to give our kids a sugar rush.

On to new achievements in home health monitoring: Abby now has to spend 2 hours a day with a contraction monitor strapped to her belly. It looks sort of like a gray hockey puck -- quite fashionable. The sensor is called a "TOCO." But since I do not know what that stands for, I prefer to call it "The Taco." It plugs into this box which reminds me a little of the TI-85 that I played video games on in high school, thus facilitating my failure of pre-calculus during senior year. The Taco, however, has larger buttons, and lacks cosine and arc tangent functions. (Side note: I actually have no idea what those are. My lovely wife will be handling the math/science homework in the coming years.)

She has been averaging about one contraction per hour of monitoring. She is allowed 5 before they start her on anti-contraction meds. Hopefully it will be some time before it comes to that. In the meantime, I am personally boycotting contractions for the rest of this week and intend to use them as little as possible. This should make work rather interesting since I am one of the primary copywriters and, gosh, those little apostrophe-laden gems are quite helpful. But hey, it is the least I can do.

The confusion of Baby A and C

So, I had another ultrasound on Friday. I get to have one every week now. The babies all look good and weigh 11 ounces each. I actually did not gain any weight this week. Amazing, because I sure ate a lot. Although, it is getting a little more difficult to eat as much because my uterus is pushing up against my stomach.... it is like instant gastric bypass surgery. We still do not know the sex of all three babies. Apparently, there has been some confusion as to which baby is A and which is C. In the past we thought it was baby A that we could not tell the sex on. Now they think it is baby C that we cannot see the gender. Basically baby boy B is all on his own on the left side and baby A and C are so close together, it is hard to tell who's parts go with which body. I had 2 ultrasound techs with a combined 37 years of experience and they could only confirm that there are 2 boys and one "?". So, we wait until next week...... Anyhow, I am feeling okay. I am still every low on energy and spending a lot of time on the couch. Looking forward to the Colts game today!

Growing larger 19Weeks

As nurse Margie said last time she saw me "my, you have really blossomed". As you can see compared to the the 16 week photos I have really grown. This is 19weeks can you imagine what 30 weeks will look like?

Sorry Uncle Eli, Doc says no more work

We had our 19 week checkup this morning and got to take a peek at the babies today. Baby A is still being un-cooperative and they could not confirm the sex. We had 3 ultra sound techs in there with us today and no could determine the gender. Baby's A's knees are still closed tight together and he/she is keeping us guessing. Now, Baby A did deiced to urinate while everyone was watching. Seriously, I did not even know a fetus could do that, I guess that confirms her/his bladder is functioning properly. Is this child going to be a little trouble maker or what. In other news, the Doctor told me I can no longer work. Since my job requires me to be on my feet most of the day and in and out of 10 offices a day, it is just too much stress on my body. Plus, there is the whole thing about me having had this kidney infection.... ect. So, I am on a sort of modified bed rest. I am not confined to the bed (yet) but need to stay off my feet as much as possible. So, I have no idea what I am going to do for the next 3 month at home.... but I am sure I will find a way to keep myself occupied. Plus, from this point out I get to go to the doctor EVERY FRIDAY for a check up... So, there will be lots of updates coming your way.

"Mmmm, that *is* a tasty burger!"

Well, it was no Big Kahuna Burger, but I think Jules would agree that St. Vincent's Women's Hospital does serve up one heck of a cheeseburger. No joke. Now, you might be thinking, "Sam, you're just saying that because you spent 3 nights on a foldout chair and your expectations weren't that high." I know, I'd be thinking the same thing. But I can promise you that, as a cheeseburger connoisseur, this really was a tasty burger. Tasty enough that I ate 3 of them in less than 72 hours. So, if there was a silver lining to Abby being hospitalized for 4 days -- and I'm not saying there is, but if there was -- it would have to be the cheeseburgers. Technically, I ate 2 on Saturday alone (one just after midnight and one for lunch). Who does that? I do, my friends. I do.

Long story short. Abby began feeling sick on Thursday. We gave it a day, but by Friday evening she was still running a fever that was pushing 101. We paged our doctor, and he asked us to come to the hospital right away. Ultimately they determined that she had a kidney infection. So they put her on IV antibiotics late Friday night. We had an ultrasound early on Saturday morning and, as we expected, mystery baby A and boy babies B & C were bouncing around like Milo when the doorbell rings, quite oblivious to the situation around them. At no point during the stay did the doctors and nurses express concern for the babies' health, provided that Abby stayed put and kept up her meds and fluids. Which she did. I mean, I tried to convince her to road trip to the Colts game with me, but she wasn't having it (she's always been the practical one).

Abby steadily improved and was released on Monday afternoon. So we're back home now -- tired and looking forward to seeing Milo, who has been staying with Bonnie & Ernie and, apparently, causing just a bit of trouble (shocking). Abby seems to feel like herself at this point. Tired, but triplets will do that to a girl. If all goes well, it will be quite a few weeks before I have another opportunity to enjoy a delicious hospital cheeseburger.