Finding out we're having (high risk) Twins! Pt. 1

Since the day we found out we were having twins (June 25th), so much as transpired that I can hardly wrap my mind around it. We went into our midwives office for an ultrasound that day when I was 12 weeks 1 day. We didn’t even need to have that ultrasound! But knowing my anxiety, we booked it anyway and thank goodness we did. We had two ultrasounds prior to that at 6 weeks and 9 weeks at which they found a properly developing embryo each time. Those visits were incredibly reassuring to me but without fail about a week or so after the last visit, my anxiety would start to get the best of me. Because of our history of pregnancy loss, I couldn’t stave off worries of something going wrong, of yet another miscarriage.

I thought so many times about calling the midwives for reassurance, about rescheduling our appointment to check on the baby sooner and the only thing that got me through those moments were mantras and affirmations that this time was different. That the fate of this baby was not tied up in the fates of the two that had come before. I would recite to myself over and over what our reproductive endocrinologist told us at our 6 week ultrasound, “this baby has a 95% chance of survival”. After being told that with two miscarriages under my belt, all future pregnancies would have a nearly 50% chance of ending in miscarriage as well, I was feeling really good about a 95% chance of survival.

So the day of our 12 week ultrasound finally arrived, I sat in the waiting room shaking like a leaf, feeling like I was going to pee my pants I was so nervous, you know, typical jitters… We finally get called back, start the ultrasound and I was immediately flooded with relief. I’m not sure what I saw; maybe a flickering heart, or some bit of movement but whatever it was assured me that there was a vital being still growing in my belly. The ultrasound technician continued to scan around a little bit. She didn’t seem to be taking any of the usual pictures or measurements yet but she was asking questions about our previous ultrasounds: when did they take place? What had the results been? Was this an assisted pregnancy? I didn’t read much into it, just answered dubtifully. And then after a pregnant (lol) pause she said, “guys, I’m seeing two babies,” and we completely lost it. Laughing and crying hysterically. Completely incapable of composing ourselves. And the tech kindly excused herself so we could get it together a little bit before proceeding.

The first pictures of babies A&B!

I’m sure the whole office could hear our hoots of laughter intermingled with joyous sobs of relief and disbelief. Once we had quieted down a bit the tech returned and completed the scan. Both babies looked exactly as they should and the nurse let us know that she couldn’t with any certainty identify a membrane in between the babies. Now, at this time, we had no idea what that meant. We sat down with the midwife who advised that we have another ultrasound done as soon as possible by a sonologist (doctor of sonograms) rather than just an ultrasound technician, or sonographer. She said that I was potentially carrying a higher risk type of twins. They could be mono/mono, or possibly mono/di but without a second opinion we wouldn’t know for sure. She let us know what some of the risks were and that we would likely need to see a specialist (a Maternal Fetal Medicine doctor or MFM) for the duration of our pregnancy. They booked us an ultrasound with the sonologist for the following day and started the referral process for the MFMs.

I don’t even know that I remember exactly how I felt that day. We had two huge pieces of news dumped on us that afternoon, one overwhelmingly exciting and one potentially scarier than any news we had ever gotten before. One of my husband’s most important attributes during this entire fertility process is his ability to remain calm in the face of a heap of uncertainty. Another mantra, inspired by my husband, that has gotten me through much of these last few months is that there’s no use freaking out about things we don’t know and certainly no use fretting over things that are completely out of our control. And this circumstance put us squarely in the middle of both of these issues. After that day, we didn’t know for sure if these babies were high risk or not, and if they were, this was something that had been determined many moons ago that we could not go back and fix. So all we could do was wait for more information with all the hope in the world in our hearts.

To be continued…