January 16th, 2012

Wonder Twin Powers Activate!

Since my pregnancy (and twins!) announcement post was big on surprise, small on information. I thought I would throw out the few details I do know.

Short Version:

• My singleton due date was 6/26 and I am 17 weeks as of Tuesday.
• We don’t know the sexes yet.
• Twins don’t run in either of our families, but there might be one or two distant sets on my husband’s side.  Edit: Twins are only genetic on the mother’s side. So, nope. They don’t run in my family.
• My best guess is that this was a case of my ovaries releasing more than one egg, which is more likely to happen over the age of 35.

Long Version:

I found out I was pregnant back in October, I told my husband on Halloween. I procrastinated scheduling the first doctor visit because last time, my doctor told me that they usually don’t see people until 10 weeks or so. In mid-December, I had two pretty severe gall bladder attacks, the second of which landed me in the ER.  A (very) brief ultrasound in the ER showed a baby, waving happily.

A lecture from the ER doctor on not having seen a primary care physician yet led me to get a last-minute appointment at one of the clinics associated with the hospital where I used to work. Due to the last-minute nature of the appointment, I saw a first year resident and at this point was 12 weeks pregnant. The appointment went fine enough. A few diet changes corrected the gall bladder issue. She had trouble finding the heartbeat though, and neither could the attending who came in, so we put off telling anyone about the baby, even though not finding a heartbeat at 12 weeks is not that uncommon.

At my 16 week appointment, this same resident couldn’t find the heartbeat. A different attending came in and he couldn’t find it either. I am laying on the table, being steadily jabbed with a fetal doppler and simultaneously trying not to pee or cry. Finally, they went and got the ultrasound machine. I saw two round things on the first pass and decided I must be seeing things, but nope. He went back over and lo and behold – twins! The doctor said you have twins and I may have been in a state of shock, but I clearly remember him saying “and there is a heartbeat.” A heartbeat. They scheduled a follow-up formal ultrasound for two days later. I spent the next few days convinced, CONVINCED, that I had a two-headed baby.

I got the formal ultrasound and it is two heads and two babies. Twins! I’m still a little shocked. This isn’t normally something found out so late in the game. I haven’t been back for the follow-up appointment with my current doctor yet and I plan on switching to an OB soon, so that’s about all of the info I had.

Also, it looks like I might have super twins – all signs point to them being Gemini, which is the sign of twins.

Signs of Impending Twindom:

• I got a positive pregnancy test fast. Super fast. Like almost a week before my period was due fast. With Spencer, I didn’t get a positive result until 2 weeks after I had missed my period.
• My boobs hurt. That never happened with Spence.
• I’ve been so tired, I felt like I was hung over all the time. I was a little tired with Spence, but not much. I thought it had more to do with how much I worked through the last pregnancy and I pushed through and ignored it last time, but that doesn’t seem to be the case. I also just thought that maybe pregnancy was more difficult with a toddler around, which it is, but that wasn’t the sole cause of the super tiredness.