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.