I’m a sucker for mushy stories about love, pregnancy, or babies. In my Twins post about Facing the Facts, I reference a bit of my own shock (and hubby’s) when first aware that we were having twins. But here’s the whole story.
Planning to Conceive
As our first born was nearing his first birthday, we started talking about the timing of having a second baby. We agreed that it made sense to have #2 before our first turned two for a few reasons:
1. We knew we would be moving to a different state for my husband’s job but the move might be for just a year. Thus, I didn’t plan on working when we moved and thought it made sense to pop out a baby and rock being a stay at home mom!
2. We didn’t want to move with an entirely new newborn or move while pregnant and have to find a new OB mid pregnancy. We LOVED our OB.
3. As an educator, I could maximize my disability and just start my summer vacation (also resignation) for maternity leave early.
Maybe TMI: I went off birth control a month before our “ideal” month to conceive. Hubby was traveling that month right at the time I would be ovulating, so we thought we were in the clear until after our awesome family reunion in Myrtle Beach where margaritas and much fun would be had.
Also TMI (by the way, I stopped caring): my family is very fertile, I am ridiculously regular, I can feel a pinch in my ovaries when I ovulate, and from using ovulation prediction kits while trying to conceive the first time, I learned that I ovulate atypically early in my cycle, like immediately after I finish my period.
God Must Have Laughed at Our Plan
Well y’all, the second night hubby was gone, as I was walking the dogs, I felt that ovulation pain, twinge, whatever you want to call it, WAY more pronounced than ever before. As my hand flew instinctively to the pain in my right ovary, I thought to myself “Huh, weird. But we are definitely in the clear until next month.” In hindsight, that must have been my super twin implantation that I was feeling. Kinda cool, right?
So, off we went to MB, with some feminine products in my toiletry bag because that’s when my period would come. But it didn’t. My period is so regular, I can practically predict it to the hour. So, when I hadn’t gotten it 12 hours later, I thought “Hm, if I don’t get it by tonight, I guess I’ll be buying a pregnancy test when we get home.” By day 3, still on vacation, I admitted to hubby that I was late, and he said “you’re pregnant” without a doubt. So I bought a test and in less than 2 minutes, I saw the word “pregnant” staring back at me. No margaritas.
AND that meant I was totally pregnant (with twins) when my little man turned 1, just 10 days earlier! THAT. IS. CRAZY.
You know what else is crazy? Two weeks later, and a week before our scheduled OB appointment, I dreamt we were having twins. I mentioned it to hubby and laughed. I laughed. He, however, did not.
Jump ahead another week, we headed to our doctor’s appointment excited and nervous to have ultrasound confirmation for baby #2, which we had decided we’d nickname Roo. (Our first was Nugget.)
The Doctor Definitely Laughed at Us
As I lay there, smiling excitedly at my hubby who was looking over our OB’s shoulder at the screen which I could not see yet, I noted a flicker across the good doc’s face. At the same time, hubby’s eyes grew big and his jaw dropped, before he exclaimed slowly, “Are you kidding me?”
I looked at his face then the doctor’s, searching for reassurance that everything was ok, but since doc was smiling, I knew nothing was wrong. For a split second, I thought, “Please just be two. I can handle that.” (Remember, I’d actually dreamt we were having twins). I think I asked “What? What?,” looking back and forth between their faces, before our doctor finally said “Well, what I’m looking at are dichorionic diamniotic twins” and turned the screen to me.
Immediately what I felt was bewildered, a tad relieved (yay, not triplets), and happy. But, mostly bewildered. Hubby’s face was pretty comical, made funnier by the fact it stayed frozen like that for the next week or so.
When the doctor left to give us some time, the first thing hubby said was “We’re going to need a bigger car!” I was pretty speechless, but when the words finally came, this is what I wrote in my first journal entry to Piglet and Roo:
It also didn’t take long for me to tell hubby, “I’m gonna have to quit! We’re gonna have to tell people sooner! Our parents! My principal! Other teachers and support staff!” Maybe that explains hubby’s face for the next few weeks.