Twin Pregnancy

My husband and I had been trying to conceive for a while, not using IVF or anything, so this pregnancy was no surprise (at first!). I knew right at 4 weeks that I was expecting.

Too bad those pregnancy tests can’t give you more than one line if it’s a twin pregnancy! A little advanced warning might have been nice. 😉

I called the doctor right away but, since we weren’t under the care of any fertility specialists, the doctors have a policy that they don’t take pregnancy appointments until you are at least 6 weeks pregnant. That was fine with me. I preferred a female doctor, which put me out another few weeks. In the end, my first appointment was scheduled for when I was to be 9 weeks. I’m a pretty laid-back person about medical stuff and don’t really get uptight about doctor appointments, so I was totally content with waiting a while and just taking it easy in the meanwhile.

Well… I like to jog. I did a pretty hefty trail “run” (ok, it was a trail jog) of about 9 miles the weekend that I found out I was pregnant (I didn’t know I was pregnant with twins yet-I might have opted to walk instead!).

I also had just gotten in a car accident. Don’t worry, I wasn’t at fault. THEN, at about 6 weeks along in my twin pregnancy, I started having light bleeding and mild cramps. I’ve had a miscarriage before and this didn’t seem like a miscarriage. Still, bleeding while you are pregnant is nothing to take lightly. And I couldn’t help but think that the last week’s adventures had taken a toll on my body.  I panicked, freaked out, and called the best unofficial nurse I could find at 8 a.m. on a Saturday: My mom. She is so awesome. My doctor’s appointment was not for a while and I was just sure I was losing the baby. Mom talked some sense into me and I obviously did not lose the baby, er, babies. 

I am sharing this story because, when I found out I was pregnant with twins, the OBGYN explained this early bleeding for me. When your uterus is growing at twice the rate (like it does during twin pregnancies), you may experience some bleeding. I didn’t know this at the time, but that scary experience was just my two little cutie patooties making room for themselves.

Are you a “Mom of Multiples”? What’s your pregnancy story?

For me and my husband, our twins were a complete shock. Twins don’t necessarily run in our families. I mean, there are the random set on his and my side of the family. But those few sets of twins wouldn’t be enough to prove that twins ‘run in the family’, per se.

If you did not conceive through In Vitro Fertilization, you may not find out that you are having twins until your first doctor’s appointment. At the first appointment, your doctor will check for a heartbeat and will be able to tell if there are twins because there will be two heartbeats instead of one.

Here’s how it went down for us. We had our first appontment when I was 9 weeks pregnant. We have Kaiser insurance, and they typically do an ultrasound at your first appointment. As the Ob/Gyn was finding the baby using a vaginal ultrasound device, she noticed that there was another dark blob in the background. That dark blob was the other baby! We were in shock, cried happy tears, and I protested in disbelief that there couldn’t possibly be two babies in there. 9-week old fetuses (fetusi?) don’t really look like babies, they look like little ghosts. But, sure enough, those babies each had their own distinct hearbeat.

Of course, for a long time after that it was still hard for us to grasp the idea that we were having twins.

Are you expecting twins? Share your experience in the comments.