September 4th finally arrived. Alex and I walked into the doctor's
office hopeful. My numbers were already higher than they had ever been in my
first pregnancy so I felt assured that this one would be different. About ten
seconds into the ultrasound the tech said "We have a heartbeat!" She
had zoomed in and all you could see was this little dot on the screen with a
little flicker inside the little dot. "See that flicker? That's the
heartbeat. 113 beats per minute." I looked at Alex. He squeezed my hand. I
was about 30 seconds away from being a blubbering mess. She did all her
ultrasound techy things and said, "you're only about 5 weeks along. You're
measuring at 5 weeks 2 days." I didn't realize we'd get a heartbeat that
early. I was elated. Then she said she was going to look at both of my ovaries
quick and then... "oh! oh!... oh! There's another little peanut
in there!" I said, "You're kidding, right?" Total shock and
disbelief. I looked at Alex again. He had one single tear streaming down the
left side of his face. And then he started laughing.
What? Huh? How? Twins? How
are we going to have twins? Is she sure there are two in there? What? What?
What?
I couldn't get my brain to
function. I was just starring at the image on the screen of two distinct
placentas with two distinct flickering heartbeats, both at 113 bpm. We were having fraternal twins. This was reality.
I called my sister and my best
friend, Olivia, to share the news. I texted friends who already knew I was pregnant and got the same shocked response from most everyone followed by some sort of 'Congratulations!'. My friend, Kim, is a twin. She called me
when she got my text even though she was at work. "I'm freaking out! Are
you freaking out? WHY AREN'T YOU FREAKING OUT!?" I answered honestly -
"I think I'm still in shock."
We had another ultrasound at 7
weeks. My doctor said especially because it's twins and because of my
miscarriage he wanted to see me every two weeks and we'd do more ultrasounds
than you'd do for a singleton. Can't argue with that.
At 7 weeks their heartbeats
were 168 and 161 bpm. They looked like little tadpoles.
At 8 weeks we told my parents and some extended family at our fall birthdays family get together. That day
deserves a full post on it's own. I will never forget my mom's reaction. Here is our announcement I made:
At 11 weeks we had another
ultrasound. They looked like tiny little humans already. How was it possible
for them to already look like babies when they weighed less than 1 ounce each?
I look at those ultrasound print outs and I still marvel at the miracle of
pregnancy - I am MAKING HUMANS. Two of them! They have little hands and little feet and little eye balls!
At 12 weeks we did labs to send
in my blood for genetic screening and to find out the genders. My doctor called
me a week and a half later to deliver the news - Everything came back negative
(that's good) and we were having two baby girls. (!!!) I wanted to have some sort of
gender reveal - maybe something small with a cake with pink sprinkles in the
middle - but the second I knew their gender I couldn't keep my mouth shut! By
lunch time I'd told all the contacts in my phone and all of my co-workers.
Whoops. We announced on facebook and then the cat was really out of the bag.
My next ultrasound is tomorrow. I'll be almost 17 weeks. I can't wait to see how they've grown.
Comments
Post a Comment