Shower #1 & 20 week ultrasound

I'm super exhausted from my weekend at home so most of this post will be in pictures.  I wanted to say thank you to everyone who came to my shower and to my mom putting it together!  I know it was super early, but my doc said this was my last opportunity to fly so it was the only time to have a shower at home.  The girls are so loved by everyone already and now have many, many cute outfits to wear along with a lot of useful gear.

During the trip we got to spend an entire day with my nephew and parents, hung out with my brother and soon to be sis in law, had the baby shower, ate breakfast with an old friend, went shopping at KOP with my momma and pops, caught up with my two good girlfriends and went to the Terror Behind the Walls at Eastern State Penitentiary. Phew!  It was a very successful and busy trip home.  Oh yah, and I turned 30!

At the ultrasound this morning the girls looked perfect and are measuring 11 and 12 ounces which is good even by singleton standards.  

Cutie pie

First Phillies outfits!

My beautiful diaper cake! Thanks Mom and Colby!

Mamacita and I

I always wanted to be pregnant and here's the proof

Annie and I 

What a sweet girl!

I may be biased but he is the cutest

Hanging with J and Katie

Baby Swag!

18w3d I'm definitely getting bigger...no comments from complete strangers yet, but I can see people looking at my belly!

Week 19: Maternity clothes and weight gain

Maternity clothes.  Up until week 15-16 I was getting away with wearing my regular jeans and using a hair tie to keep it closed with a belly band over it. Then I found a pair of full panel (I think?) maternity jeans.  Heaven.  At that moment, I gave in to the comfort of maternity clothing.

I was lucky enough to have a good friend loan me her maternity clothes and I hit the jackpot at a local consignment store.  While I was checking out the cribs, the store manager let me know she had just priced some higher end (pea in the pod, pickles and ice cream) almost brand-new clothing that would fit me.  At that point I became hooked on the deals and have been scoring big time at the consignment shop, Target and Maternity Motherhood. So far I have gotten 10 shirts, 3 pair of work pants, 1 pair jeans, 1 pair cords and 5 dresses for about $150.  Not a bad deal, especially knowing that the jeans and one of the shirts from the consignment store would have costed $150 if I got it brand new.  I just cannot see spending all kinds of money on clothing that I will only be wearing a few months and possibly never again!

My weight gain has been pretty steady throughout. From my pre-pregnancy weight I have gained 8lbs.  In the beginning of my pregnancy I read the book When You Are Expecting Multiples, because I heard that it had the best info for multiple pregnancies.  
It really freaked me out reading their weight gain suggestions.  It recommended gaining 24 lbs by 20 weeks and then an average of 1.5 lbs each week until delivery.  Oh, and they say to add 5 lbs if you had fertility treatments and 5 more for first time moms on top of all that.  For anyone doing the math...that's a total of 60lbs.  In the mean time my ob told me to gain about 35 lbs.  Little bit of a disparity there?  I am not freaked out by actually gaining whatever weight I need to gain for the twins to be healthy, but the doctor who wrote the book was very adamant about needing to hit weight milestones to decrease the chance of having underweight babies.  For now I will just keep eating as healthy as I can and whenever I feel hungry.

 I was not able to work out AT ALL from week 7 until week 14.  It felt so good to get my clearance and get back to the gym!  I have been going with J in the mornings about 4-5 times a week and doing the stair stepper for about 30 minutes each time.  I think it is helping me to keep my weight gain steady, but it also makes me crazy hungry.  2 hours does not go by without my stomach growling.  I also love spending that extra time in the morning with my hubs.  Once the girls get here we will not be able to do that :(

My stomach has realllly popped out this week!  No comments from strangers yet, but my client's grandmother who hasn't seen me in a few months asked if I am expecting.  I have this feeling that since I wasn't really showing at week 17-18 and then boom! popped out, that my stomach is going to start growing exponentially.  Woohoo!

Gender reveal...

We had a doctor's appointment at 15 weeks and were really hoping that the ultrasound tech would be able to tell us the genders.  We were so disappointed to find out that we didn't even have an ultrasound scheduled that day!  We begged the doctor to let us have an ultrasound to try to find out.  The tech agreed to do it because she said I am pretty small still and that would give her a good chance to check things out.  Well...she told us for sure the gender of Baby B, but couldn't see the other baby because its legs were crossed.  She tried for a good 40 minutes but our little baby was not letting us see the goods!  She did however, tell us what she would say the genders are if there was a gun to her head...

Well seeing as how we have zero patience we immediately made an appointment for that afternoon for an elective 3d/4d ultrasound.  Again, we had to beg them to check because they said it was too early, but we knew that the other ultrasound tech would have been able to see the gender if only the legs weren't crossed.  After a good 30 minutes this technician came to the same conclusion...

TWO GIRLS!! Holy cow, were we surprised!  J and I both had a feeling that it was a girl and a boy.  I guess we were wrong!  Although, my biggest fear right now is that we will go to our next ultrasound at 20 weeks and find out that one "girl" had turned into a boy haha.  I always said that I wanted 5 boys...so it's only fate that I would end up with twin girls!  We are so happy to have healthy, growing babies that it doesn't matter what gender they are.

We decided to do a small gender reveal with Jason's family and our good friends.  We baked cupcakes and cake ball cookies and filled the centers with pink.  We had everyone make their guess for the genders.  Blue= two boys. Yellow= one boy, one girl.  Pink= two girls.  It was fun to watch everyone's reaction when they saw pink inside!

Since my parents live in PA I had a local flower shop fill a box with a bunch of pink Mylar balloons and two Pink balloons that said "It's a girl".  My mom called me when she received the box and her reaction was priceless.  It sounded like this, "Hold on...there's pink....pink....more pink!  It's all pink!!!"

We already picked out their names, so everything is starting to feel very real.  We already got their cribs and nursery furniture and my wonderful in-laws will be painting the nursery one weekend while we are away (so I don't have to take in the painting fumes).  Pretty soon my one-day-someday-maybe-baby-room will be an actual nursery.  I still cannot believe it.  We have been so incredibly blessed throughout this process and I honestly feel so special that I have been chosen to carry two little girls at one time.

I have been going through a pretty serious nesting phase the past few weeks.  I have been going through the clothes we have stuffed away in closets around the house and have already donated 3 full bags of clothes to Goodwill.  I have been going through drawers in the kitchen and our bathroom and just throwing away crap with no abandon!  It feels great to make space and get rid of things we do not use.

Here is my 8 week, 12 week and 16 week comparison.  I will be 18 weeks on Thursday and I think there will be a big difference in the next picture!  I go home in a few weeks and I am really hoping not to disappoint with my belly :)