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So today is officially 35 weeks and its getting a little bit crazy.  We had an appointment yesterday and her Dr.  proceed to tell us that she was dilated to 5ish cm and 80% effaced.  Now all you dads are probably wondering, yeah I am not really sure what all that means.  So typically 10 cm is fully dilated and, obviously 100% is 100% effaced, and all equals, its pushing time.  Now for my sweet wife, labor is a fairly quick ordeal.  She is not the type that is in the hospital for 36 hours, miserable, walking around, and trying to coax these babies out.  When we get the epidural, there is usually a baby in about 30 minutes.  All this past history makes me worry about her walking around being dilated to a 5!  Bottom line is we will be have a couple of rowdy boys in short order, and we still have not packed a bag yet.

Now the Queen of this 7/8 (if you include, which you should, me!) boy family is hanging in like the royalty she has become.  If you take a glance at the picture above and imagine two of them squished in to a 5’8″ 120 lb, model like frame, one can only fathom how unbelievably inhospitable that must feel.  Those boys have pushed her diaphragm so far north that breathing is a labor of love and now she has a head cold to top it all off.  Amidst all this torture her tiny body is going through, she continues to be the strong, type A, take charge, sharp woman I have grown to adore and admire throughout the 10 years we have been married.  A few years back I had the opportunity to deliver one of our beautiful sons, and since that moment I have marveled at the miracle a woman’s body goes through during pregnancy, and the violence that traveling through a birth canal must have been for each of us.  For those of us that have kids, how cool is it to see the joy and emotion of your wife the second that baby comes into the world.  All the hard work and misery over in a few pushes and you get to hold your creation.  It is truly an aw inspiring and humbling event, to say the least.

This time, baby 6 and 7, will be a bit different.  There is no fairy tale delivery in a beautiful room, decorated impeccably and, truly, rather comfortable.  No, we get to deliver in a cold, sterile OR, with the NICU (Neonatal Intensive Care Unit) teamS, standing there, with two incubators waiting for these boys.  My mom was a NICU nurse for some 20 years, and they have a saying for the babies we will be having: WWB or weenie white boys.  That doesn’t sound too flattering and it isn’t.  WWBs do not do well in the NICU, so we are hoping for 2 plump little strong men that avoid any stay in the NICU!  #chunckybabies

Today she will go for a measurement and estimation of the size of these boys and the amount of amniotic fluid around each baby.  This could gage when we go to the hospital to bring these boys into this wild and crazy family.  We still haven’t settled on names yet, but hope to narrow the search in the coming days.

The end is near, the light is here, this tunnel is finally coming to an end.  Soon these boys can breath in the crisp fall air and meet their big brother Quinn!

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