The day before my first appointment I went with my friend Tara to tour the birth center. It was nice, with a tub in each room and although I wanted a homebirth for my last baby, I was mostly okay with the compromise.
So March 6th, Thursday, Nathan and I went in for the first appointment. They were going to do a dating ultrasound first, and so I laid back, relaxed, and watched the screen while she measured my ovaries and cervix.
Then she said, "lets measure these babies".
My heart skipped a beat and I looked at her and said, "Oh, haha, not funny!"
She said, "It's not a joke."
"No, it's REALLY not funny!"
"Well I'm REALLY not joking." She said this pretty rudely, and maybe I deserved it but I was completely shocked and she was so nonchalant about it. So I looked at the screen, and sure enough this is what I saw:
I was so shocked, I can't even remember Nathan's response. I couldn't see him because his seat was way behind me. I just lay there saying "oh my gosh, oh man, I did not expect this." To be quite honest, I went into my appointment expecting to be told I had miscarried. Other than some extreme fatigue, there were no other symptoms. No nausea, vomiting, spotting, or anything.
Twins, unfortunately, risk you out of the birth center and right into the labor and delivery unit. My appointment that day was with a midwife, since that's who I'd intended to see for the whole pregnancy, and she really couldn't answer many questions other than that I'd have to see an OB from now on and that I'd have to birth the babies in an OR, probably with an Epidural. She had basically nothing to tell me. She did say that the OBs in their practice are about as close to a midwife as a physician can get, and that as long as Baby A is head down we are good for a vaginal birth--the physicians are comfortable with breech deliveries.
The twins both looked great. Baby A will always be the twin closest to my cervix. They were measuring 8 weeks 1 day, and had heartrates of 159 and 157.
It was pretty fun to leave there and call our sets of parents and tell them the news. They were shocked, but excited for us. I am still in shock. To be honest, I'm mourning the birth experience that I had planned for, and I'm totally okay with taking the time to do that. I'm excited for all the fun times that will come along with twins. I'm completely overwhelmed at the though of all the kinks that can come up in a twin pregnancy, and at the thought of TWO newborns on top of preschooler and a toddler. PLUS, Nathan will be deploying shortly after the kids are born, which adds another layer of stress. For right now, and probably for the next several years of my life, I'm taking this day by day. Well, to be honest, when I have two newborns I'll probably be taking it hour by hour! I also keep telling myself that if God gave me two, it's His job to decide what will happen with them. Now, on to obsessive googling and twin-birth-story reading!
This is how we announced on Facebook:
