The Story of Two!

That's right folks, we're having twins. See below this post for pictures of the ultrasounds and a hilarious video Nathan put together last night. We're super excited...and not just a little overwhelmed! But wow, what a blessing! And now for the story that led up to us finding out about this kiddos. Night before last (Monday night) around 11:45 I started bleeding, so Nathan picked me up from work and took me to the ER. We were there for about 3 hours while I got poked and prodded, which was just a ton of fun. When the ER doc was examining me, she felt my uterus and said, "Dear Lord, your uterus is HUGE! Are you sure you're only 9 weeks along?" I assured her I was and none of us really thought about it again.

All of the tests were inconclusive, my pelvic exam looked good, and the bleeding had stopped so the doctor sent us home (at around 3 am) with orders to get an early ultrasound and see my OB in the morning. So off to the radiology department we went at 9 am (I had only slept about 2 hours by this time) and as soon as the tech started doing the ultrasound, he stopped, chuckled, pointed to the screen and asked, "What do you see?". I looked up and saw a couple of round circles that looked like two fried eggs next to each other, but didn't have a clue what that meant. He said, "Those are the crowns of two heads." TWO?!?!? Yep, twins. You can see exactly what we saw in the first ultrasound picture Nathan posted.

After that the xray tech examined my belly from every angle, and we got to see each baby moving its arms and legs and got to hear each of their heartbeats. Which, by the way, had to have been one of the most profound and moving moments of my entire life...actually, two of the most profound moments, one for each heartbeat. I just remember how terrified I was that something was going to be wrong and that I wouldn't hear my baby's heartbeat. Then to hear two heartbeats, both going strong, and to see my children's arms and legs moving. If your heart can break from happiness, that's surely what happened. I never thought I could fall so in love with something on a computer screen.

This would explain, however, why the heck I am already starting to show right below my belly button, why I've been so hungry non-stop, and why the ER doc exclaimed over my HUGE uterus. When our OB walked in the room after seeing the ultrasound pics, all he could do was grin and all we could do was grin back! Too much fun! He said that some slight bleeding is normal between 8-10 weeks, just as long as I don't start again. There's going to be a lot of planning to be done in terms of getting ready to have a safe and healthy pregnancy and delivery of these two kiddos and we're going to start meeting with a doctor at St. Luke's in Boise because the chances are pretty high that we will have to be life flighted there if I go into preterm labor.

We won't be able to find out the genders until around 20 weeks, but Nathan and I are hoping for either a boy and a girl or two boys. I mean, can you imagine having two girls going through puberty at the exact same time?! (shudder) But of course we will be wildly excited about whatever they turn out to be, as long as they stay healthy.

So yeah, I have twins...the girl who never even considered the possibility that I might someday have twins. Evidently Mom and Dad warned me that this was a possibility because of our family's history, but I think they told me that on the day I found out that I was pregnant and it just didn't sink in. According to my dad's mom, there are three sets of twins on her side and a set of twins on my grandpa's side. And evidently Nathan's grandma (dad's mom) has a brother who had twins. So we were "doomed" from the start!

As you look at the ultrasound picture of the top of both of their heads together, Baby B is sitting right below my belly button and Baby A is sitting right below Baby B. No, that's not what we're naming them, that's how the medical community refers to them. When we got to see each of them from the side, Baby A was the mover and shaker, constantly waving its hands and feet around. Meanwhile, Baby B was just hanging out, relaxing, only moving a little bit. I wonder if that is just a hint of things to come.

Wow...twins. Nathan and I just say that we like to do things differently, that's all.