We questioned whether we wanted to ‘start all over’ with the baby stage. In the end, we decided it would be worth it. I’ve spoken to multiple people who wish they had another child. I have yet to meet a parent who said, “Oh man, I wish we hadn’t had that third one!”
Besides, we figured this baby would be a breeze compared to the first two. With Allison, we had just one baby at home, and life was relatively simple. Of course, we were first time parents and had no idea that life was relatively simple. I was overwhelmed by nap schedules (or lack there of) and diapers and nursing. When Nicole came a long, we pretty much had the whole baby thing worked out but were unprepared to add the toddler into the mix.
My thought was that our third child would be so much younger than Allie and Nicole that it would basically be like having one baby again but with the advantage of knowing how easy we had it. Good thinking, right?
Except I think this is what happened: Karma and Fate were somewhere out there hanging out, and they witnessed my cocky can-do-girls-and-maybe-even-a-boy attitude. One nudged the other with his elbow and said, “Heh, heh. Dude, you know what would be funny?”
**********************
Our first ultrasound with this pregnancy was back in December when we were 8 weeks along. My doctor said we would try to see the heart beat, and make sure it was just one baby. You can imagine my relief when I saw our baby’s head, belly, and arm and leg stubs and a nice strong heart beat. The doctor moved the wand around a little more and confirmed, “Just the one baby in there!”
 |
| One peanut. |
I was absolutely exhausted—more so, it seemed, than I had ever been when pregnant with either of the girls. Even my borderline neurotic tendencies with the house started to slide as a result. I left beds unmade (particularly mine—what was the point when I knew I’d be back for a nap within hours), dishes undone, and toys scattered all over the house. I’d be asleep by 9:00 at the latest, despite having taken a nap.
When the exhaustion and morning sickness failed to abate well into the 2nd trimester, it did occur to me that something else might be going on. I thought I may be anemic, but I also knew that pregnancies vary greatly and mine might be of the particularly rough variety.
Then I started to get big. I mean really big. The kind of big where putting on your own shoes in the morning can seem a bit daunting. I hadn’t actually gained more than a pound or two, but my belly already looked like it did around 36 weeks with Allison.
 |
| 20 Weeks. Thar She Blows. |
I won’t claim that I had some sort of mother’s intuition or anything about having twins; it was more wishful thinking that there was a reasonable explanation to why I looked like I was about to give birth only 20 weeks into the pregnancy. The only other theory I came up with was that I was carrying a goat, whose gestational period is about 5 months. Not surprisingly, I preferred the twin theory.
The night before our twenty week ultra sound I had a hard time sleeping. I couldn’t wait to find out if we were having a boy or a girl, and I woke up early, worried whether everything was okay.
After we got the girls off to school, Chris and I headed over to the hospital. We checked in at the fetal monitoring center and waited to be called. I couldn’t stop smiling when they finally called us, and we were taken back to the ultrasound room.
Our technician squirted gel on my tummy, placed the wand on top, and an image popped up on the tv mounted in the corner of the room. She moved the wand around pretty quickly at first, but we could clearly see two separate circles on the screen.
Chris told me later that it was at this point that he suspected there might be two babies. I didn’t speculate as I have always been horrible at reading ultrasounds. When Allie was a baby, I finally just lied and said I could see her little legs and arms, when in reality I had no clue what I was looking at.
The technician asked if this was our first ultrasound. I replied, “No, we had one at 8 weeks.”
“Well, I’m seeing two babies,” she said.
 |
| Two peanuts. |
I looked at Chris. He looked back at me. I smiled. He smiled back, albeit slowly. I was actually wondering if I was in the middle of a very realistic dream that had spawned from all of my hidden twin research. I was considering pinching him to find out, but he didn’t know that.
I asked the technician if she saw two heart beats, and she replied that yes she could. She also could see two heads, two bodies, and a whole tangle of arms and legs. Then I said, “No way. I can’t believe it. This is crazy,” about twenty-six times.
But the weird thing was, despite my assertions to the contrary, I could believe it. I think I was truly more shocked that both babies were boys than that there were two of them.
While the ultra sound technician took measurements on Baby A (11 oz) and Baby B (10 oz and a major mover and shaker), I asked Chris if he was surprised. “Well, I thought I might be seeing two babies when she first turned it on,” he said. Then he added, “And I thought you were looking big. Really big.”
I tried not to take offense, as I had certainly noticed the same thing, but I still felt compelled to defend myself. “There are a lot of women bigger than this at 20 weeks!” [I have no idea whether that’s true]
“Really?!?!” he answered, disbelievingly. That’s when I pinched him [in my mind].
We spent the next 45 minutes or so watching our little boys move around and stretch their tiny arms while the technician got the images she needed. She said that the boys were lying feet to head, so that Baby B was breech. She could only see one placenta, and said it looked like the boys each had their own sacs. We will be unable to determine if they are identical until after they are born and have DNA testing.
After she was finished, a doctor also came in to take a look. He asked us to meet him in his office afterward. It turns out that being pregnant with multiples automatically puts you in the high risk category, and there are varying degrees of high risk within that.
Because the boys share a placenta, there is a risk of Twin Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTFS). About one in five pregnancies with shared placentas will have this syndrome, where one baby gets too little blood and the other gets too much. The doctor reassured us that it doesn’t look like the boys are having that problem now, but we will need to be seen for another ultrasound in a couple of weeks to make sure this is still the case.
The only other abnormality that could be spotted at this time was that both boys have just one umbilical artery. Most babies have two, but the second is a redundancy [like having two kidneys, the doctor explained]. As long as the ones they have continue to function properly, this will not be a problem.
About two hours after we arrived at the hospital, we were finally able to schedule our next couple of ultra sounds and head out. The rest of the day was spent in a blur of telling friends and family the big news. An alarming number of you took some convincing that we were in fact telling the truth, but why would we lie about something like that?! [Ok. It kind of sounds like something I would do.]
No comments:
Post a Comment