172

Every Sunday evening at 8:30 the diaper service comes by to pick up the soiled diapers and drop off new ones. We have to keep track of how many diapers were used in order to make sure we get just enough diapers every week. For the first full week of diaper services we went through 172 diapers. Thats just over 12 diapers per child per day. Good times.

Relieved

We got the results of the amniocentesis a couple of days ago; but, I've been to busy to post anything until now. Both girls are without detectable genetic defects at this point. More than anything else I feel relieved. We have one more check-up in two weeks to take a good look at their hearts. If that turns out well then there should be no more issues to worry about with their health until birth (where the worry is that they'll be too premature.)

At this point I'm having trouble thinking of the girls as anything other than two tiny human beings.

Its a girl (or two)

We had the amniocentesis today. Hopefully everything turns out OK and there will be no Down's Syndrome. We'll find out in three weeks.

We did see lots of images of the fetuses today. Its really hard not to think of them as babies. They look human in many ways, though their only about 6-7 cm long. We could see them rubbing their eyes and stretching or tossing & turning as they tried to sleep. Incredible!

They're both female. With a house full of three women, I'm sure I'll be reduced to being a wallet and a warm bed to sleep on. Not that I mind. :)

Names

Now for something fun. We're trying to come up with good names for the upcoming twins. We had previously picked out one girls name and one boys name; but, with twins it looks like we'll have to think a bit more about extra names for each gender. The names already settled upon are accessible for both English and Japanese speakers. Note: I now pronounce my last name "wild", like Oscar Wilde.

Lin Taro Wilde (male)
Leah Wilde (female, no middle name)

For the Japanese equivalent the family name would change to Hirono's family name, Mogi. Kana versions of the names would be:

mogi rintarou
mogi reia

Additional names are a bit hard. Got any fun names or names that would work in both Japanese and English. Names nobody in their right mind would be fun, too; such as "Saxon Wilde", the future hair metal guitarist.

Twins, here we come

Fantastic news today! We had another ultra sound and were able to see heartbeats for both embryos. We now have a 90%+ chance for each embryo to survive.

There’s still the worry of Down’s Syndrome, which is about 1/60 for each embryo. The test for Down’s Syndrome has a 1/300 chance for resulting in miscarriage, which is pretty scary. Living with two handicapped children the rest of our lives is out of the question, though. So we don’t have much of a choice.

Off to Michigan for the next few days to enjoy a bit of colorful foliage. Cheers!

Some Relief

Some good news. We have two embryos that survived thus far. We don't have to worry about being outnumbered by babies anymore. Now we need these two to survive.

One embryo already has a heartbeat, so its strong and growing faster than average. Since this embryo has a heartbeat, its chance of survival dramatically jumps higher right now.

The other embryo doesn't yet have a heartbeat. Heartbeats start on average on day 3 of week 6. We're currently on day 1 of week 6, so there is still a decent chance of survival for the second embryo.

Although we're not out of the woods yet, I'm definitely relieved.