23. A sheep named Sally!

Exhaustion

I've hit a wall. Gradually over the last couple of weeks, I have started to slow down, even more. I thought I was slow before, but this is another level. I've taken to napping most days if I can. I wake up stiff and sore but a few minutes of walking around helps with that, but an hour later I am absolutely exhausted and then just tired all day. 

Walking upstairs is now a real chore and I usually need to sit for a minute when I get there. It's whole body exhaustion, my arms and legs go wobbly as well as the expected puffing and panting. 

I am now at the stage where if I'm standing for more than 20-30 minutes, less sometimes, it wipes me out. Cooking dinner is something I still feel like I can do and want to do it so James doesn't have to, but I've not made it through completing a meal for a while now. I'm too exhausted and in a lot of pain so someone takes over. I even bring a stool in so I can sit while I am chopping, cooking and washing up, but that position aggravates my ribs. Which are extra bad when TC is right up under them, which is most of the time now.

On the plus side, I have had a few reasonable nights sleep now. I do a lot of tossing and turning, but I'm doing OK really. 

And mentally, I'm still pretty good. I am more regularly feeling sorry for myself and get a bit glum, but it's to be expected when I'm not even able to play games on the floor with Jack. I try to do some painting with him at the kitchen worktop, but I can only manage that for a few minutes. He doesn't seem bothered by it, but it upsets me. 

I was talking to him about the triplets the other day and he was telling me he is going to be a big brother. I told him he will always be my number 1, and he said "mummy, I'm 2!" Haha!

He has been lovely these past couple of weeks. He clearly knows I can't do much, so he comes and cuddles me and the triplets lots. And we have lots of little chats about everything and anything. He is fascinated with my "huge tummy" and always wanting to see it and patting it. He also wants to see other people's tummys which is funny. He laughs when he sees it wriggling which is super cute.

Ewe named Sally

James popped up to a local farm yesterday and was chatting to the farmer and his family. The first lambs of the year have been born, and guess what? They are triplets. The farmer has named the sheep Sally. Haha! We will have to go and visit her when the babies are born. 

Sterilisation

I was asked about whether I had thought about contraception after the babies arrived. My response was "tie the tubes!" There are various options for us with varying reliability. I want reliability! No, I need reliability! Tie the tubes, all of them! 

Cramp

I've not suffered with cramps at all during either pregnancy, except for the other night. I woke up with my calf completely locked in cramp. The normal solution is to grab my foot and pull it back to release the cramp. Could I grab my foot? Could I heck!!! Oh my goodness it was excruciating and I was yelling by the time I finally managed to roll myself out of bed to sort it out. Thank goodness James was in a different room! What a bloody wakeup call!

Diabetes update.

At my appointment on Tuesday I brought up the diagnosis of diabetes. The lady who was taking my appointment instead of Justine said she was a diabetes person too so I showed her my app and talked through my results. I have been given a guide of where my results "should be". If they tip over or under they are marked as red on my app. I have had a few low readings before breakfast, and a few high ones, only 4 or 5 in the past couple of weeks, usually after a large evening meal. When I say low and high, I mean just one point maximum higher or lower. The doctor last week said if my results were massively out, like 10 points out, then they would talk about treatment, but they are so minimal that no further action is necessary. 

They got one of the diabetes specialists down to confirm it, and she cancelled my clinic appointment and made it a telephone appointment instead. Phew! Thank goodness I didn't need to drive to the hospital again the next day! 

The call was very reassuring too and she just told me to keep an eye on my high results and try to figure out from my food diary notes, what the trigger is. But all in all, its good news. It shouldn't effect the babies but they will be tested for high sugar levels when they are born. They would probably be tested anyway due to being premature. It also means that they are unlikely to be brought out earlier than the planned c section date which is nice to know. 

Toenails 

I'll start this by saying, I hate feet! And I hate people seeing, or even being near my feet. As you can probably imagine, I don't see mine very much any more at the moment. But I swear my toenails are growing faster than ever. And my god, cutting them is SO difficult!! I really don't want to ask James or anyone to cut my nails, the poor boy doesn't need to put himself through that on top of everything else. I can only hope that today's cut is my last one before the arrival of the babies, because it was like a contortionist performance without the contortion. It'll take me most of the day to recover from it! 

Identical or non identical?

This is a question I am asked daily, and the answer still is, we don't know. We are being treated as Dichorionic now, since November, rather than Monochorionic. Which means, we are being treated as a set of twins and a single, with 2 placentas. One placenta feeding the twins, and one for the single. 

This is still very much undecided though, and I feel like the majority of our sonographers still think they are all identical due to the membranes being so incredibly thin. 

So the answer is, we don't know. The further along the pregnancy has gone, the more difficult it is to tell, so we will just have to wait and see when they arrive.

The thing is, birth may not be clear either! James and I were both blond haired, blue eyes babies. I'm now more ginger and James is more mousy brown with ginger in his beard. Jack came out quite ginger but is a true little blondie now. The hair and eyes are pretty much decided for this trio already, so we will have to look closely at features instead. And frankly, all babies look so similar anyway. On James's mums side of the family there are a lot of brown eyes, but the overwhelming majority in both mine and James's families are blue. 

If they do all look similar and we can't tell, there are blood tests you can get, but they are costly apparently. 

So the answer is, we don't know and we may never know for sure if it was one little egg that went nuts, or 2 that started life in there. People often ask if the NHS will pay for the test due to the rarity of identical, spontaneous triplets. I haven't asked simply because I very much doubt it.