Dividing by Fractions as a Fertility Treatment

Brandon and I are sometimes asked how we ended up pregnant with twins. People want to know if we were using any sort of fertility drugs or treatment. The official answer is no, we were not on any fertility drugs. We were not undergoing any In-vitro treatments or anything like that.

However, there is a silly theory for how we ended up with twins. It's pretty funny, but first you have to understand a basic math principle. When you divide whole numbers by fractions the numbers get bigger. For example 3 divided by 1/3 is 9. For those of you who are more visually oriented than math oriented here is a visual example. Imagine you have 4 cookies. Now divide each of those cookies into fourths. You will end up with 16 cookie pieces. (4 divided by 1/4 equals 16).

Okay now that you understand this principle you can hear the rest of the story. Brandon has two sisters. The older one got married about 10 years ago and wasn't able to have kids for several years. The younger one got married about 7 years ago. Brandon's Dad made her a homemade bed as a wedding present. Within a few months she was pregnant. The older sister wanted a bed too so Brandon's Dad made her one. Within a few months she was pregnant too.

Brandon and I got married about 3 years ago and it took us a while to get pregnant. Sometimes we would joke that it was because we didn't have a homemade "fertility" bed yet. All we had was two mattresses on top of a box spring. It worked well for us in our tiny apartment. When we moved to our townhouse style apt we ended up with a huge bedroom. I wanted a headboard to make our bedroom seem more complete.

We built a headboard out of an old futon. Here is the post about how we did it. We probably should have made a whole bed frame. Because apparently when an Illguth builds half a homemade bed it acts like dividing fractions. 1 fertilized egg divided by 1/2 a bed equals 2 fertilized eggs.

The really ironic thing is that we joked about this as we put together the headboard. I remember saying, "hopefully these homemade beds aren't affected by fractions or else we are going to end up with twins." Little did I know how right I was.

And here is what I look like at 27 weeks along with those twins. I think the shirt in this picture makes me look bigger than I really am, but maybe that is just wishful thinking.
The babies are doing well. They are kicking a lot. Sometimes they kick so hard I can see my stomach jump. I'm doing well too. Last week I had to take the 3 hour version of the gestational diabetes test. (I'd failed the 1 hour version) Thankfully the results came back that I do not have gestational diabetes. So this later half of my pregnancy continues to be a lot less eventful than the first half.

Thoughts on "the real word"

Over the past several years Brandon and I have heard the following sentiments expressed by friends and family. "You think college is hard - just wait 'til you get to the real world."

With our move from Logan we have started entering the "real world." And it is great!!!!!!!

So far it hasn't been any worse then college. In fact it's better! Here are some of the things that are better.

1. Brandon is working at a job he loves. Brandon works for Frontier Airlines as a ramp agent. He gets to load bags into airplanes, drive the truck that pushes the airplanes around, and talk to pilots on the radio. He is in Heaven. Eventually he will be cross trained in the customer service side of the company and will be able to work at the ticket counter. The pay isn't great, but it is more than he made in Logan. Plus it is in an industry that he loves.

2. Brandon has awesome work hours. Back when he was in school Brandon had 7:30 AM classes almost every semester. And on the days that he didn't have class he had to be at work at 7:00. I was really used to him leaving the house while I was still asleep. Now he works swing shift which means we stay up late and sleep in every day. It's actually a great schedule. I think it will work pretty well when we have the girls too. We will probably be the only parents that wish our kids would sleep during the day instead of night.

3. We don't have to pay tuition/fees/random school charges. Instead Brandon gets paid for working hard. When I graduated this was my favorite part. I no longer had to pay professors to be mean to me.

4. We live closer to family. Today was my brother's mission farewell. If we still lived in Logan we would have had to pack for the weekend, drive an hour and a half, stay at Brandon's parents, try to spend equal amounts of time with both families, go back to Logan late, and spend the next 4 days trying to recover from the whole weekend. Instead we woke up today and drove the 25 minutes to Salt Lake.

5. I can spend the afternoon reading. I'm no longer working and I'm trying to take things easy so I can avoid bed rest. So I'm spending a lot of time reading and relaxing. I'm enjoying it while I can. Sure I miss working, but I love relaxing.

Here is a story that illustrates our life in the "real world." Last Wednesday Brandon and I got out of bed around 8:30. After breakfast we walked to a nearby park. We laid on a sleeping bag and read "Where the Red Fern Grows" for a couple hours. Then we walked back home and had lunch. Brandon went to work and I worked on some projects. When Brandon got home we watched a movie. What a life!

It's been two weeks already?

Monday was my most boring ultrasound yet. Boring is good because it means the babies are doing fine. But it's still boring. Brandon told me, "I want to play with our babies, I don't want to just look at them."

There weren't any cute pictures or moments. Thank goodness a funny doctor came in to interpret the ultrasound or else I might have died of boredom. Here are some pictures to illustrate why having an ultrasound every two weeks isn't as cool as you would initially think.

This is a picture of the thin membrane that separates the sacks that the twins are in. They are in separate sacks but they are sharing a placenta. This round thing is a cross section of baby A's belly. Her stomach (or maybe her bladder- I can't remember) is the black circle in the bottom.

This is a picture of Baby A's brain.

Here is a picture of the umbilical cord. They use the Doppler effect to figure out which way the blood is flowing.

And here are two little feet. There was good news at the end of this ultrasound. There is no indication that these girls will develop Twin to Twin transfusion (that's where one twin starts giving nutrients and fluid to the other twin- crazy). So now I only have to go in for ultrasounds every 3 weeks. I can't tell you how happy this makes me!

Here is what everything looks like on the outside. I've 26 weeks and 2 days in this pic.

I spent the last couple afternoons working on these dresses. Sewing for two is actually really easy. You only have to figure out the pattern once.

I just need to buy elastic and bias tape so I can finish the neck and the sleeves.

I'm getting excited for my little girls.

Spice Rack

My new apartment has tons of counter space, but somehow it is lacking in cupboard space. Out of the three apartments that Brandon and I have lived in this one has the least amount of cupboards. This is causing some trouble because we are used to sticking everything in the cupboards- dishes, pots, pans, food, random things, you name it. Now we have to adapt to these new limits. I quickly realised that we couldn't let the spices take up half a cupboard. They needed there own space- a spice rack.

I originally was going to make the spice rack myself. I'd spent an afternoon at my aunt's house making a decorative shelf (it's hanging up behind Brandon in this picture) and it was super fun to do . I figured a spice rack couldn't be much harder. Brandon, however, had other plans. He'd just finished his last college paper and he was itching for something to do with his imagination. So he took over the planning, cutting and assembling part of the project.

I'm glad he did because he did things I wouldn't have even thought of like put in supports for the shelves.

I painted the rack and hung it up.

And now all of our spices have a place to call home. And they don't take up nearly as much horizontal surface space.

For those of you still reading here is a pic of me at 25 weeks and 2 days.

24 Weeks and another ultrasound

While researching twin pregnancy stuff I read that at 24 weeks with twins I should look like I am 32 weeks along with a single baby. This is my first pregnanacy so I don't know what I would look like at 32 weeks, but here is what I do look like at 24.
On Monday I was 24 weeks along and it was time for another ultrasound. Baby B got lots of attention this time. Two weeks ago she was in an awkward position and so the tech couldn't get all the pictures we needed. This week she was much more cooperative and so we got all the pictures. This pic was taken in the first few seconds of the ultrasound. I love profile pictures. Most of the pictures were of things like her brain and bladder - cool to see, but not that cute.

These are her legs. You can see her leg bones the fibia and tibia. It looks like she enjoys stretching out.

The highlight of the ultrasound was when they tried to get a picture of Baby B's feet. Baby A was apparently feeling left out because she stuck her feet in the picture too. It's easier to tell what is going on in the video, but I don't have a editing program that will make the video short enough to upload to blogger. This still shot will have to do. This is looking at the bottoms of four little feet. Picture them moving around and you will see why this was so cool.

Most of the ultrasound was spent looking at the placenta to determine if it really is one or two placentas. So baby pictures weren't a priority. However we were able to see both babies near each other. In this picture you can see several body parts for each baby. Don't try to see anything resembling a cute baby - its just stomachs legs. It does give you an idea of how close to each other these babies are.

After searching for several minutes the ultra sound tech was able to find the thin membrane that separates the babies into separate sacks. However, she couldn't find any proof of two placentas. So we are still treating the girls like they are identical.

It's important to know if the babies are identical because there are more complications that can develope with identical twins than with fraternal. Basically identical twins can have a hard time sharing the placenta equally. That is why I go for ultrasounds every two weeks - to make sure both babies are growing correctly. So expect more pictures in two more weeks.

To GRE or not to GRE, that is the question

I've been kicking around the idea of taking the GRE test for a couple months. A friend at work had the study guide at his desk and I randomly picked it up one day. Everything in the study guide looked doable. Out of curiosity I went to the GRE website and did a couple practice questions. I was able to answer them pretty well. Now that I'm no longer working I have a lot of free time. I picked up a study guide at the library and did a diagnostic test. I rocked at the verbal part and did okay on the math part - especially considering my last math class was 3 1/2 years ago.

I'm really curious what I would score on the actual test. I know I could probably score high. I'm fantastic at multiple choice questions. And my writing isn't bad either. In high school I passed 6 AP tests. I even earned the top score, a 5, on 2 of them. (When I first told Brandon that I got a 5 on the AP English lit test he asked, "Out of a 100?")

But I have no desire to go to grad school, so why should I take the test? $150 is a lot of money to pay just to see what I would score. The only degree I'm remotely interested is an MBA in Operations Management - and raising twin girls will basically give me the equivalent of that.

Still the score is good for 5 years, so my options would be open if I ever did decide to go back to school. So I'm thinking about taking the test before the girls are born. I'd appreciate any suggestions/comment you may have.

Weekend in Yellowstone

Many months ago my sister Emily and I decided it would be fun to take a road trip to Yellowstone together with our husbands. She lives in Rexburg ID which is close to Yellowstone, and I have a National Park Pass so the trip made perfect sense. Over the next few months we picked a weekend, reserved a campsite, and waited.

A couple things happened while we waited. Brandon graduated, I got pregnant, we moved, and Brandon got a customer service/ramp agent job with Frontier Airlines. Still this trip was happening no matter what.

Then on Monday at 9:40 PM Frontier called Brandon and told him they had a training spot open starting the next day. They already had booked him a flight to Denver for Tuesday at 7:30 AM. Training would last until Friday. This was great except we had planned to be in Yellowstone on Friday.

Luckily Frontier was able to book Brandon a return flight to Jackson Wyoming instead of Salt Lake. So I went ahead and drove up to Rexburg on Thursday.

Emily and I went shopping and bought lots of fun food for the trip. I made trail mix.

Emily, David, and me put together tin foil dinners. We froze them over night in the freezer. All night I had dreams that I would forget to pack them the next day. Thanks to the dreams I remembered to pack the dinners. However, I forgot to pack the peanut butter and jelly. Luckily we had lots of other goodies available for lunch.
We got up at 4:30 and were on the road by 5:45. We were in Yellowstone by 7:00. It was so pretty. We drove in through the west entrance and then drove south through all the geyser basins.
The air was still cold so all the hot springs, geysers, vents, mud pots, and pools gave off lots of steam.

We worked our way though the different basins and then arrived at Old Faithful. Old Faithful went off soon after we arrived. This is a picture of it as it started going off. It got a lot taller than this, but I wanted to enjoy watching it instead of trying to get the perfect picture.

Emily and David's baby boy, Asher, was so cute. Everyone we passed would smile and wave at him in his stroller.

This geyser when off right as we walked by. It was really neat. Then we watched Old Faithful again (It goes off every 90 minutes give or take 10 minutes.)

Then it was time to go pick up Brandon. We drove South out of Yellowstone and into Grand Teton National Park. There were some very breathtaking views of the Tetons.

Brandon was waiting for us at the airport. I was so happy to see him after 4 days of being apart. We drove back up into Yellowstone and to our campsite at Bridge Bay.

We set up our tents and started a fire.

After dinner everyone else made tons of s'mores while I got to play with Asher. He spilled water all over me.

I forgot to pack the marshmallow roasters so Brandon made new ones out of wood and tape. What would I do without this man?

The next day we woke up and enjoyed cereal while it rained lightly.

Then we packed up the tents and headed on our way.
We were only about 15 minutes from our first stop of the day, but the tourists and the bison had other plans for us. We ended up in a 45 minute traffic jam caused by these bison. One walked right in front of our car. It was a fun adventure.
When we got to our destination (the Mud Volcano area) there were bison in the parking lot. At one point we stood between cars while bison walked by 10 feet in front of us. Brandon caught it on video, but for some reason it wont upload onto blogger. So you will just have to imagine 40 HUGE bison going past you.
The Mud volcano area is my favorite part of Yellowstone. Unfortunately, we weren't able to see much because the rangers had closed some of the trails due to the bison. We were able to see the mud volcano and the Dragon's Lair.

Then we drove North through the Hayden Valley. We stopped at the Brink of Upper falls and looked over the water fall.
We also stopped at Lower falls. I couldn't make it down the trail to the brink. Well actually, I know I could have made it down the trail, it was the back up part that had me concerned. A 600 foot climb in less than 1/2 mile didn't seem like something I should be doing.
After the waterfalls we stopped for "lunch." Really it was "eat the remaining food." There were some pretty interesting things left over.
Emily and David were great to travel with because they are really laid back. They were fine with whatever we did. Asher was also really great, and so cute!
Our last stop we the Norris Geyser Basin. It was hot and we were all tired. We probably didn't enjoy it as much as we would have if we had stopped there first.
Then we drove back to Rexberg and said good bye to Emily, David and Asher. We would have slept over at their house, but we had a baby blessing to attend in Salt Lake the next morning. So Brandon and I drove 4 hours in the dark and arrived home around midnight. We figured out that Brandon had been in 5 states in 3 days. What a trip!

I feel more prepared now

Because it took me so long to get pregnant I've kind of ignored baby raising tips and advise for the past several years. Knowing how to change a diaper or feed a baby was just irrelevant to my life. Now that I am having twins I'm quickly trying to catch up on learning how to take care of a baby.

My uncle showed me the following guide to baby care. This is probably the best explanation of how to take care of a baby that I will ever be given. I think I'll print this off and hang it up in the twins' room as a quick reference. :) Click on it to make it bigger.

On a more serious note, I spent the last week and a half hanging out with two of my sisters and their baby boys. I've learned a lot! Thanks Emily and Lindsey for showing me how to be a good mom. Your examples have taught me so much. Expect a lot of phone calls over the next few months/years.