Shortly after I discovered that I was pregnant, my husband and I joked, “Wouldn’t it be just our luck if this ended up being twins?!” A few days later, my husband said, “It will be a little sad that this baby won’t have anyone to play with. The older kids always had each other.” Do you see where I’m going with this?
Fast forward a few weeks, I’m at the doctor’s office for my first OB check. I had already met with the nurse practitioner and had the pregnancy confirmed. Before I saw the obstetrician, I was scheduled for an ultrasound. This was at about nine weeks. Before my first child was born, I had a first-trimester miscarriage and, in each pregnancy after that, my doctor allowed me to have an early ultrasound to put my mind at ease.
After that miscarriage, the two subsequent pregnancies were so uneventful that my husband didn’t even bother to come with me to see the blurry little flickering bean on the screen this time. He and I both knew that all was going to be just fine.
After the tech put the gooey gel on my abdomen, she started the familiar search with the ultrasound wand for my uterus. It soon appeared on the black and white screen mounted in the corner of the room. After three pregnancies and many sonograms, I was pretty good at recognizing all of the parts that appear on a fetal ultrasound. So, I knew. As soon as the image of two tiny sacs and two barely-discernable fetuses, each with a little flickering heartbeat, popped up on the screen. The tech didn’t even have to say anything. “No s%#t! You’ve GOT to be kidding me,” is what came tumbling out of my mouth. “So. I guess you know what that is,” she said. “Oh.My.God,” is all I could come up with. And then I just started laughing. She said they looked great and sent me off to see the doctor with a stack of images of my two little beans.
While waiting for the doctor, I tried to figure out how to tell my husband. This pregnancy wasn’t exactly planned. We had never ruled out having a third child but we hadn’t made up our minds to try either. And then one week, I got really busy at work, my in-laws were in town and I just didn’t make it to the pharmacy to pick up my birth control. I thought, oh well, I’ll just skip a month and start up again next month. Fertility is clearly not much of a problem at my house. Wow.
Anyway, I called my husband from the exam room but he didn’t answer his office phone. So, I text messaged him. “Just had the sonogram. All three of us are fine.” His response, also via text, was “Sounds great. I love you.” Obviously, he didn’t get my message. I called him and he answered. I asked him if he read my text. He said that he had and that he had replied. I told him to read it again. He did, slowly and out loud. And then he said, “No s%#T! You’ve GOT to be kidding me!” After that, total silence. Then he just started laughing.
So, at about 10 weeks, we discovered that we’d be having baby three and baby four. My doctor advised that I was now “advanced maternal age” – an unfortunate condition women achieve when they reach 35. It was this “advanced maternal age” that my OB suggested was the likely reason for the conception of twins. Believe me, I have now been offered up as the cautionary tale amongst many of our friends trying to decide whether to have “just one more.”
Because I had two uneventful, full-term pregnancies under my belt, my doctor didn’t really feel the need to treat this pregnancy much different than a singleton pregnancy early on. I did go in for a nuchal translucency test, genetic screening/counseling and several level 2 sonograms during my second and early third trimesters. And I had the usual 20 week ultrasound which revealed that my little guys were, in fact, little “guys.”
After my third trimester began, my OB ordered non-stress tests twice weekly for the duration of my pregnancy. I also had ultrasounds once a month to check the boys’ positions. I don’t think I needed those – I could have told you that Baby A was stuck in the same position for the entire last trimester. He was stretched out, with his butt firmly lodged at my cervix, feet on one side of my abdomen, torso and head on the other. He was kicked back and lounging. Baby B, poor guy, was tucked into a fetal ball, head down like a good little baby but stuck under my ribs – the victim of a utero-space “hog.”
I scheduled a caesarian section for a day after I passed the 38 week mark. No bed rest for me. No pre-term labor. Nothing but swollen ankles and an enormous belly. I’ve now birthed four children and have never once gone into spontaneous labor. The first two were induced. The last two were c-section. My body likes to hang onto its babies, what can I say?
In the early morning hours of January 9th, I checked into the hospital and was prepped for surgery. I had never been cut open before. I’ll admit I was a little scared. When I handed over my medical power of attorney (a “living will”), I had a little internal freak-out. But everything else went great. I had a lovely anesthesiologist who gave me a lovely epidural. (Disclosure: I hate, hate, hate needles. They make my knees feel week. But I love, love, love the pain block and relief they provide.) My trusted OB was there to do my surgery. The reassurance of her voice was calming.
The anesthesia gave me the shakes. Well, the anesthesia plus my whacked-out nerves. Several warm, heavy blankets in the OR resolved that problem though. And when they say “You’re going to feel some pressure but no pain?” It’s totally true. I can’t describe it any other way but I could feel that I was cut open and I could feel that the doctor was pulling things this way and that to get those punkins out. And some of it was uncomfortable but it never actually hurt. So weird.
And before I knew it, I had two babies. It was completely surreal. My husband, who watched the whole thing, described it this way: (1) about 100 gallons of fluid gushed out after they broke my sacs, then (2) they got Baby A out and he cried and I cried and we all cried, then (3) the doctor put her entire arm up into my abdominal cavity in order to find Baby B (remember, the good one who was tucked up under my ribs?). Believe me, I could feel that groping around. And out he came. He didn’t cry much but was declared healthy and fine. And we all cried again. (Baby A was 8 pounds. Baby B was 5 lbs. 11 oz.)
All in all, the birth of my twins was a beautiful experience. So different from the vaginal deliveries of my other two. But equally wonderful and touching. I was so swollen from the 24 hours of IV fluids that my feet looked like Shrek’s feet for several days. But that was about the worst of it.
A year and a half later, Baby A is still the high maintenance one. And Baby B is still a good little boy.
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