Naming Twins

No pictures and no doctors visits this week. Sorry guys. I did have a doctor appointment last week with my OB. Just the normal checkup and listen to the little ones heart beats. Everything was great. At my appointment, I was 23 weeks and 5 days and I was measuring 33 weeks (if I were only carrying one baby.) I can only imagine what I will be like at my next appointment. Probably measuring 38 weeks and I will still have at least 8 weeks left to carry the babies (as long as all goes as planned.) Man, the time seems to be flying by. I also found out that my doctor will be having her baby (as long as all goes as planned) on June 12th by c-section. So that confirmed the fact that she won't be the one to deliver me. I'll probably start seeing the other doctors in the practice soon, so that I can be familiar with whoever will be there to deliver me. So now that I have left you in suspense for the last week and a half... here are the babies names....

Truett Reid Shirley

Ellis Jay Shirley

The story of how these names came about... when we went in to our very first appointment at 6 weeks, we had an idea of names for both a boy and a girl, but we had no idea that we would need to have two names until the ultrasound. So we found out at Thanksgiving that we would need to come up with two names.... 2 boys, 2 girls, or the best option for us would have been a boy name and a girl name. Well at the beginning of January, we found out it was most likely two boys and by the end of January we knew for sure that they were two boys. But before that time we had already started thinking about names. We had actually made some good ideas for boys names and we were no where with girl names.

Truett - was the name for a boy that we had picked all along. If we were just having one boy this was going to be his name because we liked it and it was unique. I only know of two people named Truett and I don't even know them personally, Truett S. Cathy, the founder of Chick-fil-A and Truett McKeehan, TobyMac's oldest son. Love it and also like that his name can be shortened to True or Tru.

Reid - Zach's middle name. Easy enough you would think, but Truett went through several variations because Zach wasn't sold on using his middle name. I on the other hand liked it from the very beginning, but it took some convincing. We had some other options, but I didn't like the one he liked and he didn't like the one that I liked... so we went back to the basics and are now happy with Reid.

Ellis Jay - This was the name that I threw out there I believe once we kinda knew that we were having two boys back at the beginning of January. I was thinking about our family names and this just worked for me.... Ellis is my dad's middle name Edward Ellis Kilgore, which is actually my dad's great grandmother's maiden name, Mary Caledonia Ellis Kilgore. Jay is Zach's dad's middle name, Rickey Jay Shirley. I'm not sure if there is history behind this name, but I do know that Zach's youngest brother also has the middle name Jay, so we're just going to be carrying that on.

As far as who is whom, we believe that Baby A is Truett and Baby B is Ellis as that is the order that they should come out.

So that's the story.

22 weeks and counting

Today I am 23 weeks. These pictures are from 22 weeks...

This past week, we took some maternity pictures. I called up my friend and old roommate Amanda to see if she would be willing to get some good shoots of us and of course she was thrilled. I was happy to have someone who is a good friend be able to take pictures of us. Here's a little sampling of the pictures that we took in Downtown Carrollton. I'm not going to show the rest because they will be on display at my shower which is coming up in 3 short weeks. ;)
This week was my visit to the specialist on Wednesday. I was a little nervous as to what they would say because this was my first visit after having been on the gestational diabetes diet. I was afraid that my weight gain and especially the babies weight gain wouldn't be enough. I'm not sure why I was even concerned because it was not a problem at all. I gained 6 pounds in 3 weeks (right where they want me to be for total weight gain). Then they did all the measurements of the babies and well... apparently I grow big babies. They are both weighing in at 1 lb 6 oz, a total baby weight of 2lb 12oz is what I am carrying. I think that this weight has a lot to do with the fact that I have gestational diabetes. The doctor said that she figures that their weight will start to taper off... this time they were in the 80-90 % for their gestational age, hopefully the next visit they will be more like 75 and then 68 and then average out. That's what we're hoping for anyway. I'm glad to know that they are strong and healthy though. It's a good feeling!

Another interesting thing that I found out this week is that they have sorta shifted in the womb. Now one head is in my diaphragm and the other is well down there. So it doesn't matter how I bend there is a head at both ends. Not the most comfortable, but I guess they are doing what they have to to give themselves some room.

Now here are their 22 weeks pictures. Maybe next week I'll reveal the names that we have picked out to the blog world. Most people know already, I've just been waiting to reveal to the internet. ;-)

21 Weeks

Update from last week... here's a pic from 20 weeks. Also, I must correct the post, Baby B is actually the one who we went to the cardiologist for. Our appointment for the cardiologist went well last week except for the fact that I went on the wrong day. Thankfully because I was already there and it was 8am, they made room in their schedule and worked me in. I was a day early for the appointment. I guess that's what happens when you lose the appointment card in the parking lot of the doctor's office.

The cardiologist spent an hour taking lots of pictures of the heart. At the end, his report to us was that he did not see anything that was cause for concern in either of the babies. I don't have to go back to that doctor again. He gave a report to my specialist and we'll go over it next week when I have my next doctor's appointment. We were very grateful for a good report from the cardiologist.

Since my first shower is coming up in a month, last week I started my registry. I took Shevawn with me so she could show me what I absolutely needed. It was big help!! We knocked out the whole store in a matter of 2 hours. I'm sure that Zach was so glad that he didn't have to go with me. He's been able to register online for the things that he knows that we need. I didn't realize until the next day that I had screwed up my registry. At the very beginning of the night I had tried to scan something twice, but it wouldn't take the second scan, so I just typed the #2 in. I was totally unaware that the #2 never went away, so then everything that I scanned from that point on I got double of. I had scanned one thing 4 times and I ended up with 8 of them. Whoops! So on Friday and Saturday, I spent the day fixing and reconciling my registry and figuring out what I still have left to register for.

Now these babies are 21 weeks along and they are getting more active everyday. Baby A on the bottom is dancing on my bladder and Baby B is trying to nudge out of my right side. Pretty crazy feelings!

Derby wanted in on the action of the progression photos. By the way, I'm so thankful to my good friends for maternity clothes because so far I have only bought 3 things myself. Everything else has been borrowed, thanks to Shevawn and Suzanne!