Thankful Thursday: Meeting our boys

Tomorrow is the day! The day we've been waiting for, praying for and dreaming of for around 4 years! For any of you reading this without knowing much about us, Monica and I had to go through in vitro fertilization (abbreviated IVF) to have children. 98% of men with CF have either a complete blockage of or lack of the vas deferens in their reproductive system. This means no sperm can make their way out of the body without being extracted by way of surgery. Monica and I both knew this before we got married and knew there could be a possibility we would never have children of our own.I won't go into all the details, but through IVF we were blessed enough to become pregnant with twin boys! Tomorrow we get to meet them! To see the beginning of our journey here's an older post about how it all started, click here.

It really is a dream come true! It's so surreal just thinking about it. Our lives are about to drastically change. We're about to experience one of the greatest miracles of all!

For this Thankful Thursday, we both say we are thankful that tomorrow we meet our boys! I will get to hold my sons in my arms tomorrow! Jeremy and Monica will become Father and Mother to two beautiful sons. It will by far be the greatest day of our lives up until now!

I will do my best to post some pics and an update as soon as possible!

For now I will leave you with some pics of our finished nursery! Thanks to everyone for your thoughts and prayers! We both are so excited to introduce our boys to you!

Last Twin Update

This post marks our last Twin Update Post. :( :) Well the last prenatal Twin Update anyway. There will be hundreds after they are born ;) It is both sad and happy at the same time. It's always sad when something good comes to an end, but most often something better follows! Such is the case today.

Monica had her last doctor appointment before our c-section on Friday. Everything still looks great! Blood pressure is great, babies are great, life is great and God is GREAT! Monica had a lot of questions and got a lot of answers. We were concerned as to where we would be and babies would be once they were delivered. Mainly whether or not they would be in recovery with her afterwards. We've heard both scenarios, where some hospitals do not want babies with mom while recovering (which to me is absurd) and some do. Ours most definitely does want babies with mom and me as much as possible from the moment they're born! Hooray!

As long as they're both doing good, they shouldn't leave us for more than a few minutes if at all. They will do all the vitals, weighing, cleaning, etc. while they are still in the room with us. We absolutely cannot wait! Thinking about it on the way home almost brought tears to my eyes. I may be in trouble once they're born. I've heard operating rooms are very dry and dusty. ;)

Monica's OB told her several times that Monica is "amazing." She was asking if Monica was miserable at all, to which Monica replied "I'm uncomfortable sometimes, like when I lay down to sleep, but I'm not miserable." My wife is awesome...Talk about one tough cookie! Her OB said she doesn't think she's ever had a woman who was 9 months pregnant with one baby let alone two, tell her she wasn't miserable. It must be that Parks DNA flowing through her veins now :) HAHA! In Mandi's words... I kid!

Everything is absolutely STUPENDOUS!!! I will do my very best to make a post Friday night with a pic or two or 53 of our boys! It will probably be late in the evening if it happens. If not, definitely look for one Saturday! I can't wait to introduce our boys to you all!

4 Days Left!

We're in the home stretch! We only have 4 more days until we meet our two little miracles! It seems like they grow by the day too. They're supposed to be gaining a few ounces a day right now I believe. Last night A was moving around a lot! They were the biggest moves I think we've ever seen. It looked like he was gonna pop right through her stomach he was pushing so hard. It's still so amazing to watch and feel.

I'd say right now it's all still pretty surreal. We can definitely see them moving and know they're in there, but it's just so crazy to think in 4 days they'll be in our arms! I keep trying to imagine what it's going to be like. What they're going to look like. Is it really going to be as crazy difficult as everyone keeps making it out to be since there will be 2 of them? We keep trying to imagine how big they're going to be too. The ultrasound says they're both about 5 1/2 pounds. A 5 1/2 pound baby is little but not that little for being twins and that was a week ago. When we feel them through Monica's tummy they feel soooooo tiny!!

Anywho, all this imagining, wondering and questioning will be put to rest in 4 days when we meet them! To say we are ecstatic is an understatement! I'll leave you with some pics of Monica and her sister. Her sister is 5 months pregnant with a baby girl!

Thankful Thursday: Diappearing Pupps, Baby Movement & Vehicles

Hey everybody, it's that time of the week again. Thankful Thursday! Yet another week has passed us by, gone to the history books. It's human nature to take things for granted and not recognize the blessings that surround us. Life gets busy and fills up fast. It's nice to take the time to stop for a few minutes and recognize a few of the things we have to be thankful for. Here we go, our lists:

Monica's List:

I am SOOO thankful that my Pupps rash is pretty much gone!! I just can't believe it!! I'm learning foods that I think tend to trigger it too. I'm eating really healthy as not to have a lot of processed foods/toxins in my body... so that is a win-win! It seems to have made all the difference in the world. I'm still drinking my Strawberry Banana V8 V-fusion every day and have been snacking on a lot of fruit and nuts. When the rash came on full fledged both of us became very worried! It was pretty much unbearable and I was only getting a few interrupted hours of sleep a night. We thought if it continued in that pattern I would have to have the boys earlier. There were times I thought I could have a mental breakdown because I literally wanted to cut my skin off. I itched/burned all day and night long and there was no relief. It was taking everything within me to try and be positive through it and I was about to break. Yeah...it was just bad! I am SO THANKFUL for the prayers that were sent my way and to my Saviour for touching my body!!

I am thankful for the movement of my boys. As you can probably imagine they are getting very cramped! I feel every little nudge and bump from all sides! I only have 8 more days of being pregnant with our treasures... and it is slightly bittersweet! More sweet than anything because I just can't wait to meet them! I've waited my whole life for this!! Slightly bitter because I am so going to miss carrying them every second of every day and knowing that they are completely safe. Feeling them move inside my belly is the sweetest, most amazing feeling and instantly brings joy to my heart! As I type this I can feel the top of baby B's head and baby A's feet tapping. Oh, how I will miss this!! I could never express how thankful I am that the Lord has blessed me with this opportunity! I haven't taken one moment of this pregnancy for granted. This could very possibly be the only time I will be pregnant and I've tried to soak up every bit of it! God has blessed me with the desires of my heart and I will forever be THANKFUL!

"My soul glorifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, for He has been mindful
of the humble state of His servant. From now on all generations will call me blessed, for the Mighty One has done great things for me—holy is His name." Luke 1:46-49

Jeremy's List:

I'm thankful for my parents and in-laws loaning us vehicles. My blazer broke down on me twice at work 2 weeks ago and had to be towed home both times. It's in the process of being fixed right now so we've been down to one vehicle. Thankfully last week my father-in-law loaned us my sister-in-laws VW Beetle for me to drive to and from work. It's a diesel with a manual tranny and that thing is pretty fun to drive. Probably looked just as funny me driving it with the flowers she has on the dash board too! :)  Yesterday my parents let us borrow their car since mine is still being fixed. I'm thankful for loaner vehicles so we didn't have to pay to rent one.

I'm also thankful that we know an awesome mechanic! Him and his family were our neighbors growing up. He's a great guy and he's really good at what he does! I just don't trust taking it to a shop where I don't know the people. I hear people at work talking about how something happened with their car so they took it to the shop and left with a $3,000 bill, and the shop owner telling them all these other things had to be fixed. I have no problem paying someone good money to fix my car when I can trust them and know they'll fix it right. I'm very thankful that I know an awesome mechanic, and doubly thankful that he agreed to fix it. He's a very busy man!

Belly Pic: 36 Weeks, Twin Update & New Delivery Date

We had an appointment today for growth ultrasounds and fetal monitoring again. A month ago, at 32 weeks, Baby A was 3 lbs 12 oz and baby B was 3 lbs 13 oz. Today they had trouble getting good measurements of both, but their estimates were that Baby A weighs 5 lbs 7 oz, and Baby B weighs 4 lbs 13 oz. Whoo-hoo! No wonder Monica's tummy seems to be growing exponentially! They had the most trouble guess-timating Baby B's measurements and it looked to me like she under-measured Baby B's stomach. We're thinking Baby B is at least the same size as his brother if not bigger. Which means Monica has close to 11 pounds of BABY in that tummy! That's a lot!

I honestly was pretty shocked at their weights. I was thinking all along that they would maybe make it to 5 lbs but probably not. Mostly based on the twins I see at the hospital where I work. Looks like our boys are gonna be healthy plump little babies! They may even make it to 6 lbs! It was a good day for the boys! They passed their fetal monitoring tests in around 10-15 minutes. Everything looks great! We could see them "breathing" on the ultrasound. It was really cool to see that. They still look so tiny on the screen. Much bigger than the last time we saw them , but still seem so little.

Our anticipation grows more and more everyday! AND, we just found out that our C-section has been moved to April 12th! Everything is fine though! They found a slight trace of protein in Monica's urine, which they are not concerned about. They said it can be normal, it just hasn't been there up to this point. However, given the presence of protein and since it is twins, they don't want to push it past 38 weeks and give the opportunity for something to go wrong. So, they want to take them at 38 weeks exactly. So now their birthday will no longer be tax day. It will be April 12th! We only have 10 days! I know it's only 3 days earlier, but it seems a lot sooner now! Holy smokes!

And now, here's the latest greatest Belly Pic! Along with some bonus pics! :)

                                  Baseline                                                                     36 Weeks

                                                                         34 Weeks

Monica wearing a fake 9 Month pregnancy belly under her maternity dress

Monica's real 8 month pregnant twin belly in the same dress

 Our twin stroller that holds both carseats and has toddler seats when they get bigger!