OB Visit

I had my 12 week OB visit on Tuesday and according to my OB everything looks very good. She could not believe that I haven’t really had any nausea or exhaustion that comes with the first trimester. I feel great, maybe a little more tired at the end of the day but that is about it. A majority of the visit was spent talking about the plan for the rest of the pregnancy. This week I start seeing a perinatologist for extensive sonograms every 4 weeks to check growth patterns and organ development.
The goal is to keep the babies in there as long as possible with the average length of a triplet pregnancy being 31-32 weeks. If I was to go full term at 40 weeks my due date would be August 12th so I would expect to deliver sometime in June or July. My secret goal is 37 weeks which would be around July 22nd but don’t tell my OB because she thinks I would explode before then. 95% of triplets are born by C-section so I asked my perinatologist if I could try and be one of the 5% that don’t have a C-section. He said absolutely not. I’m going to ask my OB and pretend that he didn’t say that. I forgot to mention that my OB and perinatologist are husband and wife so there is a possibility that he already spilled the beans at what might have been an insane request.
Starting at 16 weeks I’ll have another sonogram every two weeks to check the length of my cervix. Shortening of the cervix beyond a certain point is a sign of early labor and that is when decisions are made about decreased activity. From what I understand there are various levels of reduced activity in order of the least confined to the most confined from stopping work, home confinement, modified bed rest at home, total bed rest at home and then if all of that fails or I can’t follow the rules then hospital bed rest.
They are not able to predict when even if at all I would need reduced activity. But because I have no other health conditions or risk factors and I’m from a good old Wisconsin farm stock of women born to birth babies, I may be fine up until I deliver. I can continue my normal activities and work but no high impact exercise such as running or tennis, not like I would want to subject anyone to a triplet pregnant lady in a tennis skirt.
My OB also did a quick sonogram just to check the heartbeats. That’s when we pinpointed the troublemaker. Baby B is all stretched out kicking and crowding the other ones. It was really just the angle but it looks like B is lounging in front and making A and C curl up in the corners. She assured me it was just the angle, they still have plenty of room and all the kicking and what looking to me like punching is not going to cause any damage. I guess I’m just going to have to get used to the fighting, at least now I can’t hear the tattling!