Surprise Again! Your carrying TWINS!!!!

Feb.4th, 2011 (7 weeks ultrasound photo)

I was working my regular shift in the ER one morning but when I went to the bathroom and noticed an awful lot of blood (something that I never had with my first pregnancy) I was quite concerned so I told one of my co-workers (she was 8 months pregnant at the time and sadly had suffered 5 miscarriages prior to her current pregnancy so she knew a lot about pregnancy and bleeding etc.) and then we pulled aside one of the ER physician's we work with. Luckily there are some perks to working in the ER and within 2 hours I was laying on a gurney having my very first ultrasound at 7 weeks along to make sure there was a heart beat and to give me some piece of mind.

The ultrasound technician warned me she isn't really supposed to tell me anything good or bad. I told her all I wanted to see was a healthy heart beat. As soon as she put the probe to my belly, the heart beat came up right away (phew....but I couldn't see it yet) and she said, "yep, there's the heartbeat!"....followed by, "why don't you lay back and let me take some measurements and then I will show you the heartbeat when we're done!?". So I laid back and answered all her questions....."is this your first pregnancy?"..."no, my second"....."were you sick with the last pregnancy?", "nope, it was a piece of cake!".....then she told me she could see a large cyst on my ovary (she assumed I already knew about it because it was very large but I was not aware)....then she said they would keep an eye on it over the course of the pregnancy and further asked me, "have you been significantly more ill or tired this pregnancy?!"....."tired YES!!! Sick, No, why!???". I still had no idea where she was going with this as I had never even entertained the idea of multiples! So I asked her but already thought I knew the answer, "why? should I be more sick if I have a cyst?!".....she replied, "well no, but you would be because your carrying TWINS!"....."WHAT!!!!???????!?!?!? "That's tech humor right!?"......"no, Im serious, look, do you see the two heartbeats?......at that point I was staring at the floor, mouthing the word "TWINS!?!?!" to myself because I was sure she just said "TWINS!" I said something like, "are you sure it just doesn't appear as twins and maybe it's just not clear enough yet and then the moment of truth..... I looked up at the monitor and make no mistake!....there was one blob on the left and one blob on the right....it was clear as day!!! There really were two!

I was extremely overwhelmed and was literally shaking, teeth chattering, I felt cold, the whole bit ( I swear I went into shock) for almost 2 hours while all the ER nurses were congratulating me and telling me how great it was going to be and the ER doc I work with was laughing. No one could believe it...especially me!!! Here I was afraid I was losing one baby and as it turns out, I am having two!

I later discovered that subchorionic bleeds and spotting are much more common when carrying multiples. I just never thought in a million years that twins were in my future! Never! There is no family history anywhere but our twins are identical (they share one placenta) so that indicates they are not genetic but rather my egg split and simply gave us two miracles instead of one! ha ha.