Wednesday, June 19, 2013

Past Halfway Mark

Last week we received our 20-week scan. According to the report, our surrogate is doing fine and the babies are growing well. The only thing that the scan picked up was the presence of a tiny Echogenic Intracardiac Focus (EIF) in one of the twin's heart! The email from SCI mentioned that "in most cases there is no consequences, and it disappears later". Of course we panicked a little at first. However after some research and talking to a few people, apparently it is seen in 3-5% of all pregnancies during second trimester, and in most cases everything will turn out fine. As a follow up, this week SCI organized a more detailed scan by the Fetal Medicine Specialist, Dr. Vandana. We are happy to report the results are fine, and all the parameters are within normal range - a sigh of relief for the moment as we are past the midpoint of pregnancy. Very happy and grateful for reaching this milestone.

Recently we met up with a friend who has an identical twin sister. She told us when her mom was pregnant with her some 30 years ago here in the US, she had no idea she was carrying twins and her doctor apparently didn't notice! So at about week 26, the mom goes into early labor and everyone was shocked when they saw the second baby coming! Makes me wonder how much we have advanced in medicine and technology in past few decades and what the doctors are capable of doing these days. I must say we feel very fortunate for choosing SCI and Dr Shivani as they are carefully monitoring the pregnancy and taking a good care of our surrogate and babies. Speaking of babies, check out their recent 3D images!! :)

Baby 1 at week 20
Baby 2 at week 20
We have started compiling a list of all the tasks that need to happen before the babies arrive. I am treating this like one big project and assigning priority and due dates for each task (kind of like what I do at work!). I have categorized tasks into two groups: Essential and Non-essential. My goal is to complete all the essential tasks by week 30. Our biggest project that is about to start is fixing our apartment that was flooded 2 years ago from heavy rains, and we finally recently settled with our insurance. Also need to buy a bigger car as our old Acura CL won't be big enough for our growing family. Hopefully all these tasks will keep our minds off the pregnancy a little this summer...

Hope everyone in the blog land is doing well.