Dancing Queen

Good morning from Cincinnati Children’s Hospital where Melissa is one of two adult patients in the entire place (the other is also in fetal care). The patient dinner menu is hilarious – lots of tater tots and pb&j.

This morning bright and early we had an ultrasound to check on Bea and look at a small tear between Melissa’s uterus and Bea’s amniotic sac. (Apparently it’s a pretty common minor complication from the surgery.) It went well enough that we will probably go back to the hotel today. Melissa is also on some drugs to combat contractions – which she's been having for awhile. Every little twinge Melissa feels sends us into panic attacks. We’ll probably need several positive doctor appointments to help regain our confidence – not that we won’t be worried silly throughout the entire pregnancy especially before every doctor visit.

In the ultrasound Bea was…. Bea! Dancing around so much that doctors were getting frustrated trying to get her heart measurements – but it made us pretty happy. In all of the ultrasounds we’ve done, we’ve never seen Bea sit still. We think Dancing Queen (by ABBA) should be her theme song.

We could also see Elsa. It was hard at first, but she looked so much more peaceful, happy and stretched out. She hasn’t been able to stretch in a couple of weeks.

Currently Bea and Elsa are around 10 inches long and little under a pound each. We will be able to see Elsa for a while. She will slowly start to get absorbed into the placenta and when she is delivered along with Bea she might not be readily discernible next to the placenta.

The long waiting game now begins in Cincinnati as we sit around the hospital and hotel waiting for Monday’s appointments. Melissa is not allowed to leave the hotel. We have plane reservations for Tuesday afternoon assuming everything will go well on Monday (we fully expect they will). We are very much looking forward to going home. Who knew you could be so excited to return to Minnesota in January.