It's a boy . . . and a girl!

I have been largely absent from the blogosphere for the past week or two because work has been insanely busy. We had six important deadlines yesterday and we met them all. I am thinking I can now coast a little bit -- after working 10 and 11-hour days for at least a week and a half.

Yesterday we had back-to-back doctor's appointments, first with the OB and then with the perinattologist.

At the OB's they did the doppler heart monitor and the babies are doing great. Their heartbeats were both around 140 beats per minute. The doctor "measured" my midsection -- I thought he was going to bring out a measuring tape, but he just felt the height of my uterus on top of my abdomen. Interestingly, he said if I were having one baby, I'd be measuring about 20 weeks, but since there are two, it makes sense that I'm this size at 17 weeks. (This explains why I feel so giant next to my colleague who is only one week behind me in her singleton pregnancy.) I also had blood drawn for the AFP (alpha-fetoprotein) test that screens for an elevated risk of various chromosomal and other abnormalities. It will take 3 weeks for the results, but I'm just going to assume it's all good since we did the full chromosomal screen on the embryos and they were normal.

At the perinatologist's office, I asked if we could videotape the monitor during the u/s and was told no, unfortunately. They used to do that but too many patients took their videos home, saw things they didn't understand, and started freaking out, calling the office and asking crazy questions they don't really have time to answer. Something also happened that involved a lawyer, so now they don't do it anymore.

The sonographer asked if we wanted to find out the gender and I assured her: YES! So first we learned that Baby B is a boy -- he was proudly displaying his manhood for all the world to see. On the other hand, Baby A was being a bit coy at first, but after several minutes, the sonographer declared that Baby A is a girl. I breathed a big sigh of relief and let out a big, "Yay!" DH and I are both very pleased with this outcome. Later I asked the doctor -- after he repeated the ultrasound just to get a look at them himself -- how sure he is about the genders. He replied with a smile, "I am 100% sure that Baby B is a boy. And I am 100% sure that Baby A is a girl." Good enough!

Thank you, CCRM embryologists, for selecting a boy and a girl. CCRM absolutely will not discuss the gender of your embryos with you. They say, "We don't do gender selection." I had hoped that with five good embryos to choose from, they'd try to pick one of each.

Back to the sonographer's look at A and B. We had about 20-25 minutes to watch what she was doing. She inspected, photographed, and measured all kinds of things -- the heart, the brain, the abdomen, the spine, and more. I was chatting away, commenting on what we saw. We could see the heart pumping away and could actually see the two ventricles! I asked how big it really is -- maybe the size of a bean? She measured and it was 1.4 cm x 1.8 cm! She also measured one of the femurs for me and it's about an inch long. Amazing! Oh, the ultrasound assesses their weight (based on all of the measurements they take, I suppose) and Baby A is 8 oz. and Baby B is 7 oz. The What to Expect When You're Expecting book says at 17 weeks, a baby is about the size of the palm of your hand.

So apparently, everything looks good. We go back to both doctors at the end of August. I am so happy that things are progressing well. I'm feeling really good and so much more energetic than I was during the first trimester.

I've got one more week of work and then a week off for vacation to go see our families. I've been jokingly telling people that this is our last trip EVER. I'm sure that's not so, but it will be a while.

Hope everyone is doing well. Happy Saturday!