Twindentity

Every time:

"Where's Jed?" we ask.
The babies both enthusiastically point to him.

"Where's Mama?"
Once again they correctly identify the person named, and point to me.

"Where's Daddy?"
3 for 3.

"Where's Carter?"
Both babies point to their twin.

"Where's Logan?"
Same response.

#twinlife #identitytroubles #whoami #whoarewe

TwinTales: The Sweet Potato Episode

Here's a story I posted on Facebook a few days ago:

I was home alone with the twins tonight for bedtime. As a general rule, this is not a big deal. But here's how pajama-ing (always immediately post-dinner) went tonight:

I took Logan out of his high chair, the evidence of his baked sweet potato all over his hands and face. I cleaned him up in the sink, changed his diaper, and set him down in the living room.

Carter's turn was next, and he was, unsurprisingly, equally in need of a good wash in the sink. While I was performing this task, Logan decided he was feeling a little peckish and crawled into the dining room, found the bowl of sweet potato he had tossed on the floor during dinner to save for later, and proceeded to have a after-dinner snack. Cue Logan's second wash.

With Logan freshly washed, I gave him a toy and sat him beside me, grabbed the pajamas I had previously prepped, and began dressing Carter. While I was thus occupied, Logan tossed the provided toy aside and ventured into the dining room once again and located another bowl - the one under Carter's chair this time - and investigated. Satisfied that the sweet potato inside was as tasty as his own and equally moisturizing to his skin, he flung the bowl a distance of about 12 feet and chased it, giggling. I quickly zipped Carter's pajamas, dropped a toy on his lap, and scooped Logan up before he reached the bowl. I put it on the counter next to the first one. Confident that both bowls and baby forks were now safely out of reach, I sponged Logan down for a third time and returned him to the living room where his pajamas were waiting. 

By this point, Carter had become bored with the toy I had given him, and as soon as I began wrestling an indignant Logan into his pajamas, Carter made a beeline for the glop of sweet potato that had escaped the bowl Logan so gleefully tossed. I saw it happening but decided it wasn't worth dropping Logan on his head to make a dive for Carter, so I let him reach it and watched as he triumphantly smacked the glob in front of him and smeared it on the floor. He was so proud of himself.

Clearly, I don't have time to clean the kitchen or mop the floor before getting the babies in bed. Just as clearly, not doing it elongates the bedtime process when I am outnumbered by little people. So what's a mama to do? In this situation, there was not much to do but laugh. So that's what I did. And it felt great.

Seeing Someone Else's Double

I recently took my 3 kiddos to an empty park for about an hour. As we were driving out of the parking lot, I saw a dad with 2 older girls and a double stroller with pink blankets. I legit rolled down my window and called out, "HI! Do you have twins TOO? ME TOO! I have two baby boys, 8 months old! How old are your girls? Do you live nearby? Do you come here often?" 

I think I caught him off guard.

I wonder if other twin parents feel this way. Like if they see another twin parent do they think:

OH MY GOODNESS YOU ARE A TWIN PARENT TOO CAN I HAVE YOUR PHONE NUMBER AND YOUR ADDRESS BECAUSE WE ARE DESTINED TO BE BEST FRIENDS FOREVER LET'S TAKE A SELFIE ?

Because that's approximately what I thought at the time about that random dad.

I think the pandemic may have upped my crazy a little bit...

At a basic level, I understand why I feel drawn to other parents of multiples; they have something big in common with me and it's something a lot of people can't understand. (Not in a bad way, but just because they don't live it.) It's easy to swap stories and tips and commiserate and laugh about life with multiples. So the connection makes sense. But I wonder why the draw is SO strong!

Because seriously, seeing another set of twins is like the most exciting thing ever to me right now.

Seeing Double

If I had an FAQ for my life, "Can you tell them apart?" would definitely be on the list right now. "How do you keep them straight?" "Do you ever get them mixed up?" and "What would happen if you called them the wrong name?" are regular variations on that theme.  I don't mind the questions. We asked ourselves much the same ones when we found out we were having identical twins! It was just one of MANY things we wondered how we would handle. We read about others' techniques - painting a toenail on one or giving one a piece of (safe) jewelry, dressing each in their assigned color or pattern every day, or searching for telltale physical characteristics - a birth mark, etc. We knew we'd figure out something when they got here.

And we did. Our methods have evolved over time, but we've always found something. Every day it's like a game of watching them to see who they are, how they are the same, and how they are different. My life is literally a game. Every single day.

When they were in the hospital, we tried our best to tell them apart. But their tiny wrinkly faces looked pretty much exactly like every other wrinkly white baby's face - so good luck telling them apart from anyone else, let alone each other. Instead, we had to mentally keep track of which bassinet they had been placed in last, or which one we were feeding/changing/snuggling at that moment. But to be certain, we relied on the hospital bands around their ankles, which we replaced obsessively because their ankles were SO dang tiny and the bands wouldn't stay on. Which worried us. What if we mixed them up before we even left the hospital?!

We are sure (pretty sure) this didn't happen. And if it did, well, then they are mixed up permanently and it will have zero impact on their life. At home we kept using the hospital bands and scoured their faces for more clues to their separate identities. A few days after arriving home, their grandmother noticed a difference in their ears - Bug had a ridge in his left ear (the crux helix) that was significantly more pronounced than Doodle's. We were so excited! We had a physical difference to use when the ankle bands fell off! I fantasized about always being able to tell with that little trick, and not telling the twins about it - so that when they were older and trying to fool me by pretending to be each other, I would KNOW.

Always, and mysteriously.

I would claim magical Mom Powers and they would be none the wiser.

Sadly, though, the ear trick didn't last more than 4 or 5 months, ish. We aren't sure exactly when the difference disappeared, because we found other ways to identify them and over time stopped checking their ears. Bug has always been a little bigger than Doodle (until their 6mo appt, when they weighed exactly the same!). When they were 5, 6, or 7 lbs, a half-pound difference was significant! Sometimes I could easily see that Bug just looked bigger than Doodle, or I could tell by the weight when I picked one up. Sometimes, though, it seemed like Doodle was catching up, and the difference between them was less pronounced. And then Bug would pull away ahead again and their relative sizes once again became useful identifiers.

Along with the overall size difference, their heads specifically told us who was who. Doodle's forehead slopes backward at a steeper angle, and Bug's forehead is taller and flatter. His face is a little more rectangular overall, while Doodle has a rounder face. But at times, this was less helpful than more. As the weight differences fluctuated, so did the starkness of the face-shape-contrast. Some days I would think, "OBVIOUSLY this baby is Doodle, just look at him! Compared to Bug, he has a mini-basketball for a head!" And then other times, "Uh...they both look like round-faced little babies...their cheeks are fat and squishy...and...yeah I can't tell. Better check their ears."

For the first few months, they were pretty much blobs. I mean, super cute, soft and snuggly, awe-inspiring and amazingly tiny blobs (HOW can a whole human exist in a body that weighs less than 5 lbs at birth? It blows my mind)...but blobs nonetheless. They did basically nothing. (Which is as it should be - their very existence outside the womb was enough for them to "do" and it kept them busy!) Around 3 months, differences in their behavior began to emerge. As in, they began to have "behavior" at all. 

Doodle smiled first. Bug rolled (toppled!) front to back first, but Doodle seemed completely uninterested in such a thing. Perhaps it was Bug's larger noggin that kept tipping him over. Doodle became obsessed with grabbing his toes. When they get tired, Doodle shrieks (not crying, just loudly exploring his voice) and Bug furrows his eyebrows, purses his lips, and begins spitting. They teethed at the same time but Bug's pearly whites popped through before Doodle's did. So for a while, sticking a finger in a baby's mouth was a surefire way to tell who you were holding. Of course, none of these things belong solely to one baby or the other. They have both had phases where they just randomly shriek to test out the volume and pitch limits of their voices ("Hey look! I have a VOICE! Isn't it cool?"). They both roll back and forth easily, both stick their toes in their mouths, both smile and laugh, and both have their bottom teeth. But for the periods of time that a behavior was practiced almost exclusively by one baby or the other, it helped us tell them apart. It was never a guarantee, but a clue. 

A revolving clue that is much more reliable than any specific behavior is the location of scratches on their faces. Do we wish they had scratches? No! Do we scratch them on purpose? Of course not! We don't actually scratch them at all, they do it to themselves (despite regular nail-clipping, which is one my least-favourite thing about having twins - having to clip TWO sets of tiny claws). But when they appear, we use them to our advantage. Since these scratches inevitably show up on their face, they are a quick and easy way to tell them apart for a week or so at a time until the scratch heals. Related, Bug has a perpetually dry nose from rubbing his little schnoz furiously on his crib sheets or the floor when he's tired, and Doodle has inexplicable dry patches on his shoulders and back. Lotion prevents these from getting worse but they persist.

There are other, less concrete, tip-offs. They're the ones that are hard to explain. To me, the babies just look different. They smile differently. Their eyes sparkle differently. They have unique reactions to things that excite them. The more they grow the more distinct they just "feel."

This doesn't mean I don't get them mixed up. I do. There are specific positions or moments that they look more alike than even I can easily overcome. If they are both asleep in their car seats, for instance, I often have a hard time telling which baby is which and look back and forth several times searching for a giveaway. Usually I just wait for them to wake up because in the meantime, it doesn't really matter. They're both asleep and both content. :)

Sometimes, I even walk around with a baby for several minutes thinking I'm holding one, only to discover that I've been wrong the whole time. Whoops. Throughout the day I mentally track where each baby is, holding in my mind an image of who has gone where and done what - kind of like a human light trail. So besides the variety of methods we've already discussed, I always know which baby is which from my mental map. But if they swap places in my mind for some reason, I will pick a baby up thinking I already know who it is so I don't really need to check - and proceed to be wrong until something clues me in to my error. So clearly I *almost* always know which baby is which. The funny thing about this is that there is usually at least one small thing that could have clued me into my mistake sooner - but I brushed it off because it didn't fit with what I thought reality was. "My, you're kind of shrieky today, Bug. Usually Doodle does that." or "Doodle, your hair is growing so fast! I think it's catching up to Bug's!" But when I realize that I've been wrong the whole time, I think back and laugh to realize that I *did* notice a difference or two, but ignored it!

[Slight tangent: Our brains are so fascinating! When two contrasting ideas present themselves, we have to choose which one to keep and which one to discard. Thinking we already KNOW something, when we see evidence to the contrary, we don't always accept it. Often we throw out the new idea because it doesn't fit with what we think we already know.]

Most of the time, I expect to know who my kids are. But I will continue to get them mixed up occasionally; because they're especially similar in a particular moment, or because I'm not paying close attention. I assume I'll realize my mistake before any great catastrophe occurs, and eventually they'll be able to quickly correct me themselves! Trust me, it certainly won't be the only thing my kids have occasion to call me out on.  

I Love You Even When You Don't Sleep

Once upon a time, we had a magical 4 weeks.

Okay, to be honest it didn't feel magical at the time, but it felt manageable. Pip and Squeak napped pretty well. We had a "flexible schedule" that allowed me to plan my day. They had established a consistent bedtime, with a dream feed and one night waking before about 7am. I kept the house picked up and the dishes done. I had a plan for using their 45min-1hr first nap that included prioritizing scripture study and breakfast so I knew I was starting the day off right - anything else was a bonus. (Usually I was able to empty and start filling the dishwasher during that time as well!) I wanted them to sleep better at night eventually, but was generally satisfied with where we were at the time - under the assumption, of course, that things would progress from there. We were doing SO much better than the newborn stage and I was feeling like a human again. I remember thinking something along the lines of, "Twins is a lot but look I'm doing it! I'm totally figuring out this twin mama thing! They say the first year is the hardest but after a rough first 3 months, we're actually doing pretty well! I've got this!"

I think that was my downfall.

At about 4.5 months, we hit the 4mo sleep regression. Squeak started it by rolling to his stomach, though he didn't actually want to be there and didn't know how to get back. This was infuriating to him. But he couldn't stop himself. No matter how many times we turned him back to his back, he immediately rolled back to his front and protested the injustice of the world.

Roll (him), flip (us), roll (him), cry (both?)

Over and over again.

As you can imagine, this made falling asleep difficult for him. It's hard to sleep when you're crying your face off. (He also started rubbing his nose raw by whipping his head back and forth facedown in the crib, which I thought was both sad and funny.) This went on for a couple weeks, at which point Pip joined in the fun - right about the time Squeak was figuring out that he didn't mind being on his stomach after all and sleeping that way was comfy. Pip went through his own journey with rolling, which overall was less frustrating to Pip than Squeak's was to him. Following that they both teethed, which bled right into social advancements that affected their sleep (see previous post re: "I love you so much!" means "Don't ever leave me or even put me down!").

"I got this" was no longer my mantra. If one napped, the other one screamed. Later in the day they would trade places. Sometimes they both decided naps were for suckers and then all three of us would be crying. Our "flexible schedule" was a thing of the past, and night wakings were a game of roulette. To be honest, I'd rather gamble my money than my sleep, but the babies weren't interested in my offers of cold hard cash in exchange for more than 1-3 hours of sleep at a time. Which is too bad. I can't sell to an uninterested buyer, so I was left with all my money and not enough shut-eye.

One night, Squeak shrieked to himself for an hour - not crying, just...loud. I'm pretty sure he was saying, "HEY! GUYS! Did you know sleeping is a trap? Don't worry, I've figured out how to keep myself awake. I just use my voice - DID YOU KNOW I HAVE A VOICE? IT'S SO COOL - and it helps you too, saving you from the trap that is sleeping. You are welcome!"

Here's a sample of one of our nights (this is not representative of every night, but 2-3 nights a week):

Down at 6:45pm

Pip scream at 8:30pm (feed both and Tylenol for Pip)

Pip cry at 10pm (rock back to sleep)

Both cry at midnight (feed)

Pip scream at 1:45am and wake up Squeak (rock both)

Both cry at 3:45am (feed)

One fuss at 5:30am (fell back asleep on own) 

Several weeks after our good sleep routine fell apart, we were still struggling. And suddenly that "manageable" 4 weeks looked "magical." Funny how that happens. 

Throughout of all this, the babies have gotten cuter and cuter. We have fallen more and more in love with them, if that's possible. They've become increasingly entertained by our antics, and we keep learning new ways to make them laugh. We have watched with delight as they've become more aware of each other (yes, even at naptime when they are happily squealing at the other's existence instead of sleeping, my heart melts and I can't be upset). We praise them for new skills, and watch with anticipation to see if/when/how they will do things the same or differently. We marvel at the speed of their growth (though the days are long, the months are short).

In short, we love them. Like, a whole lot. And (for now at least!), we'll keep them. 😊

The World is a Social Place

Somewhere between 3 and 4 months, R2D2 (baby A) and C-3PO (baby B) became super social. They began watching us as we would walk around the room, turning their heads to follow if we moved just out of sight. They started smiling as soon as they saw us, and even began giggling when we talked to them. The sparkles in their eyes let us know the smiles were social in nature and prompted by happiness, not muscle twitches. Turns out, there is a world beyond milk and sleep, and it is fascinating! 

Their delight in human interaction has only increased in the last few months. The smiles have morphed into wide-mouthed grins; the light giggles deepened into belly laughs. Their joy is full and unfeigned; they have not an ounce of self-consciousness. They laugh easily and without diffidence. I can hardly think of a better reward for all the time and effort spent caring for them; my heart melts every single time! 💗 The dopamine hit I get makes me want to do whatever it was that they found funny, over and over and over again so that the peals of laughter never stop. One of my favourite things is when they are standing in front of me, holding onto my fingers for support, and something strikes them as hilarious...their heads tip backward and their knees buckle because they can't concentrate well enough to stand, hold their neck straight, AND crack up at the same time. It is the ultimate in spontaneous, uncontrolled laughter.

Nobody can make them laugh like their older brother, Skywalker. He just lights up their life. He dances, they laugh. He talks, they listen intently. He walks past, they follow with their eyes, twisting their bodies around if needed. If he gets too excited and talks loudly at them (because they are "SO cute [he] can't even stand it"), sometimes they cry. And then Skywalker feels badly and does "Choo Choo Train" with their legs to make them happy again. 

There is a flip side to this development. With their exhilaration for social interaction comes total dismay at being denied such opportunities. And there are two of them. They BOTH want to be held and both want to played with. They have discovered that they can hold my attention and that it is FUN, and they both want 100% of it. They simply can't understand why I would ever want to put them down. They take the greatest offense right after their naps, when we haven't seen each other in SO LONG. Often they are both awake when I get them up, so I take one baby out of the crib and tell the other "I'll be right back to get you, I have to take your brother downstairs." The baby in the crib of course doesn't understand these words. He only knows that I clearly saw him and clearly left him lying there. He fusses a bit. But the baby I carry downstairs! Talk about indignation. When I leave him on the floor with a toy, he feels wildly mistreated - I picked him up, and then had the gall to PUT HIM DOWN.

I mean, seriously. What an insult. 

As you can imagine, I can't devote 100% of my attention to the babies at all times, let alone 100% of my attention to each one individually. So I attend to them as much as I can, and we play together a lot. Luckily, this still works for them. When I hold one and walk around with him, I make frequent eye contact with the other while I talk or sing. When I read a book to one on my lap, I turn the book around and show the baby playing on the floor. Often I put them on the floor together and sit at their feet, leaning over with my face above theirs. I talk to them and look back and forth between them. 

But here's my favourite part. Each time I make eye contact with one, his face lights up and he seems to imagine that he and I are the only two people in the world. But no matter who I'm actually looking at, they both grin and kick and flail wildly, because as far as they are concerned, I am playing just with them. So it would seem that I CAN give 100% of my attention to both babies at once.

I don't know how long they will accept this trio play and not demand my attention ALONE, but I'll savor every moment of it for now!

Forging Ahead

I decided a few months ago that I wanted to start this blog. I hesitated as my brain offered me all kinds of reasons that it was a bad idea, mostly in the form of questions. Who is my audience? WHO would want to read something I wrote? What would I write about that would be remotely interesting? WHEN would I find the time to write?

I knew the last one would be the biggest challenge, as the others are just doubts that are all in my mind. Even if not a single other soul read, or cared about, what I was writing, I could still write. Nobody else has to find value in my writing for me to do so. But time is a finite resource; I can't just conjure up more of it in a day than exists naturally. And with baby twins and an older child in online school, that resource gets used quickly. I knew it would be difficult to dedicate much (or any) of it to blog writing.

But I forged ahead.

I wanted to write an introduction, especially to document the twin-specific aspects of the pregnancy and delivery, and made a concerted effort to get through those first few posts so I could start documenting in real time. I didn't want to be perpetually behind in my writing. But even so, it has taken me the last few months to write those first few posts (Related: I am a slow writer, which helps my cause approximately zero), and my brain shows me this as evidence that indeed, finding time to blog is challenging and I should cut my losses and call it quits. 

But I forge ahead.

My brain tells me that I am already behind; that because the twins are now 6 months old, I have missed weeks and weeks worth of material that I could have been writing about. But those thoughts make me feel overwhelmed, which leads me to freeze up and want to write less. I do the same thing with the to-do list in my head; when I think, "Ahhhhhhh I have too much to do I don't know where to start and I can't possibly get it all done!" then my instinct is to do none of it. ...Brilliant strategy, no?

It may seem counterintuitive for me to delve into this topic in a blog post - spending time writing, of all things, about not having enough time to write. But this is my way of moving forward and keeping my momentum going. Momentum is powerful. This is me not giving in to the temptation to abandon this blog already because my twins are SIX WHOLE MONTHS OLD TODAY and I have just barely gotten to the part of the story when they began living outside of my body.

With momentum on my side, I forge ahead.

How We Got Here part 3: The Problem Child

I tease one of the twins about being our problem child, because he was the reason both babies had to be born early via c-section and I had to be hospitalized for 2 weeks prior to delivery. Twin B was perfectly cozy in there, but Twin A decided to be a troublemaker. But, being only a few months old, he doesn't understand what I'm saying. I will probably stop joking about it when he gets old enough to have any inkling what I mean.

Maybe.

The condition I was diagnosed with is called vasa previa. It is one of those rare conditions that, undiagnosed, is life-threatening and terrifying (more than half of babies die)...but managed properly, is easily kept in check. Normally, blood vessels (2 arteries and 1 vein) run between the baby and the placenta, and are protected by a gelatin-like tube (called Wharton's jelly). This forms the umbilical cord. Vasa previa means that one or more of the fetal vessels is running outside the Wharton's jelly covering, unprotected and passing close to the cervix. Any pressure on the cervix (like from labor contractions or water breaking) could rupture those blood vessels. 

And that would be bad.

Since we wanted to take home two alive babies, we agreed that I should be hospitalized. A c-section would be scheduled between 35 and 36 weeks, to maximize time in the womb but minimize the risk of spontaneous labor. I would get a steroid shot to help develop their lungs a little faster and reduce the risk of breathing problems and nicu time. Ideally, the twins would stay right where they were until the scheduled c-section, but if labor started earlier than that, I would be in the hospital already and could be rushed to the operating room.

At first I was told that I wouldn't be allowed any visitors because of covid, but the day we checked in, the hospital had loosened their policy and I was allowed one. I was so grateful. My husband came 4 days each week, and my brother (who was living with us at the time) kept an eye on the 8yo at home.

The days in the hospital were a mix of busy and tedious. I couldn't figure out if I was bored or not. I did know I felt stuck, and I stared out the window longingly. People were in and out of my room regularly. Here was the schedule from the first half of the first day: 6:10am the nurse checked my vitals; at 7 the OB on duty checked on me; at 7:30 there was a nurse shift change so they came in to review the switch and the new nurse wrapped my arm in plastic so I could shower; at 8 my breakfast came so I ate it and then showered; 9:30-10:45 the nurse did the fetal monitoring; at 11:15 the high-risk doctor came to check on me; at noon my lunch arrived…

Busy times.

Besides having regular interactions with the staff and eating/showering in peace (I knew once the twins came that would be a thing of the past!), I brought plenty of things to do. I read books, worked on my cross stitch stocking, watched Hamilton twice and 7 episodes of Sweet Magnolias, talked on the phone with lots of people, did yoga, walked the halls countless times, wrote in my journal, had a zoom baby shower with coworkers, attended zoom church and a friend's zoom baptism, and exchanged text and Facebook messages with many friends. I could have binged on Netflix endlessly. But despite having "things" to do, I did also feel bored and lonely. Since I *couldn't* go anywhere, I really really *wanted* to go somewhere. I stared out the window longingly, and fantasized about making a break for it through the double doors that led to freedom...(But not really).

Ultimately I knew that the longer my babies stayed in the better, up until the planned c-section day. And for selfish reasons, I wanted to make it past my birthday, and past our wedding anniversary. So I followed the nurses' instructions, cooperated with the daily fetal monitoring, ate decent meals, slept as much as the environment allowed, and never even ONCE tried to escape.

Yay me.

The twins did their part by being healthy and staying put, and and finally their birthday arrived! After the whirlwind of monitoring, visits by different team members, and signing of consent forms, they took me back to the OR and told my husband that he could come see me once I was all prepped for the surgery. The anesthesiologist gave me my epidural and told me he was so impressed with how calm and relaxed I was (he probably says that to everyone!). When they laid me back on the table, my blood pressure dropped suddenly, to an unacceptably low level (which was a really scary feeling; I felt like I was fading from consciousness. I could hear people asking me questions but was too dizzy to respond). When they couldn't elicit an answer to "Are you okay?" they swapped my face mask for an oxygen tube. The problem resolved quickly and all was well.

During the surgery, the lead anesthesiologist sat on one side of my head and coached me to keep breathing (being flat on my back with pressure on my vena cava, the feeling of not being able to breathe returned, though this time it wasn't actually dangerous - it just didn't feel good.). My husband sat on the other side of my head and held my hand. Overall, the c-section was smooth and at the end, I had two babies!!! I couldn't hold them, but the nurse held them close to my face for a few seconds so I could see them and give them a kiss. What followed was a blur: vitals and APGAR testing for the babies, stitching for me, my husband going back and forth between us trying to be available for whoever needed him. After being transferred to the hospital bed from the operating table (I seriously wondered how they were going to pull that off since I couldn't move and had a freshly-stitched hole in my abdomen, but they managed it expertly! It's like they had done this before!), the babies and I were monitored in the recovery room for a couple hours. Eventually we made it to our postpartum room, ordered our dinner, and settled in.

My husband and I looked at the almost-5lb newborns each swaddled in 2 layers of blankets for warmth, lying fast asleep in their hospital bassinets. Then we looked at each other.

What had we just gotten ourselves into???

How We Got Here part 2: Gestation

Pregnancy is a journey in and of itself, sometimes feeling unending (Will I ever eat without throwing up again? What did it feel like to go more than 2 hours without peeing?) and sometimes feeling too fast (ahhhh! The nursery isn't set up yet! I can't have a baby, I haven't practiced my breathing techniques enough!).

Nausea, exhaustion, backaches, restless sleep, swelling...every pregnant mama has a high chance of experiencing any or all of those, no matter how many babies they are growing. Twin pregnancies are just like singleton pregnancies. Well, except when they're not.

There are 3 types of twin pregnancies, relating to how many placentas and amniotic sacs there are. The amniotic sac is the bag of fluid that the baby lives in, and the placenta is the nutrient supply that the umbilical cord attaches to.

If the babies are each growing inside their own amniotic sac and each have a separate placenta, they are called dichorionic/diamniotic. These are the lowest risk. With separate amniotic sacs but a shared placenta, it is a monochorionic/diamniotic pregnancy (medium risk), and when the twins are cozied up together in a shared sac and have a single placenta, it is mono/mono (or MoMo for short). With MoMo twins, there are risks of cord entanglement, among other things. Our twins were Mono/Di, so they were medium risk. The biggest concern was the possibility of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS), which means that one twin starts taking too much of the blood from the shared supply, and the other twin doesn't get enough. This causes big problems for both the blood "donor" and the "recipient" twin.

Because of the TTTS risk, I went every other week for an ultrasound so they could check for concordant growth and similar fluid levels in each amniotic sac. "Everything looks great" the technicians always told me. I didn't love going to the doctor so frequently (especially during a pandemic...) but I was grateful for the regular confirmation that the twins were growing and doing well. I also saw the maternal fetal specialist, as well as a regular OB occasionally, and between all those appointments (and sporadic one-off things like a fetal echocardiogram or the glucose tests), I became good friends with the staff. I knew all the ultrasound technicians by name, how they had gotten into medicine, and how many kids they had of their own. We talked about my IVF journey, how my 8yo was handling the news of baby brothers, and the progress of the house hunt.

Early in the pregnancy I had some unexpected bleeding and cramping that continued through the night, and after only 3 hours of sleep I rushed into the office first thing in the morning to see what was wrong.

Nothing, they determined.

The twins looked healthy (good size, heartbeats, wiggling around), in no distress, and there was no findable cause for the bleeding. I felt a mixture of great relief that my babies were fine, and confusion/frustration that if there was no problem to solve, why had I gone through such stress? I bled and cramped off and on over the next few days, and I kept a careful eye on it. It was a physically demanding week at work (I'm a stage manager and we were in tech rehearsals), and I seemed to bleed more when I was more active, so I did my best the rest of the week to delegate the heavy lifting to others on my team and listen to my body. At the next ultrasound a couple weeks later (the first of my bi-weekly TTTS scans), the twins still looked healthy. I didn't know what the bleeding had been from, but chalked it up to "sometimes bodies are weird" and moved on.

Later in my pregnancy it happened again. Off and on bleeding, nothing consistent or heavy but it just wouldn't go away and stay away. I called and talked to nurses, who told me what to watch for, and I watched. It wasn't bad enough this time to go in outside of my regularly-scheduled ultrasound, but I was thrilled when that appointment came around so I would know my babies were okay. The MFM doctor ordered a transvaginal ultrasound in addition to the regular one, just to make sure. They discovered a blood vessel in an unusual place, but decided it was probably maternal and since nothing other than the random spotting seemed out of sorts, sent me home with instructions to come back in if I spotted any more. At the end of a complex and very roller-coaster-y few weeks, and 2 more ultrasounds viewed by 3 different high-risk specialists, they determined that I had a condition called vasa previa and should be immediately hospitalized prior to a scheduled c-section. I was completely thrown for a loop and not at all pleased with this development!

The vasa previa only put one of the babies at risk, but affected the rest of the pregnancy and early delivery of both twins. To learn more about it, read How We Got Here part 3: The Problem Child.

How We Got Here part 1: Conception

It's not a tale of *that* kind of conception, so don't worry, no salacious details here! 😁

We always knew we wanted more than one child. After a 4.5-year journey to even get one, I clung to the hope that the second time would be easier - I had heard many stories of people who struggled to get pregnant the first time, only to discover that something had "clicked" and their body seemed to have figured out how the process works after successfully bearing a child once! It seemed perfectly reasonable in my mind to believe that that would probably happen to me too.

My husband and I were not the only ones hoping to expand our family. After we had been trying for about 18 months, my 3-year-old Skywalker*** came to me out of the blue with tears in his eyes and cried, "Mama, I wish a baby was being born right now! *I* am not a baby anymore, so there is a baby missing from our family." I comforted him and he went away, seemingly satisfied. But he clearly continued mulling over the topic, because later that afternoon, he returned with more he wanted to discuss. He had tried to figure out a solution to our problem but needed more information.

He looked right at me. Big sigh, deep breath.

"Okay, Mama. SO. How do we even GET a baby into your belly? Can I help? Because you are taking a very LONG time by yourself, so maybe you need some assistance."

(Yes, that was my 3-year-old. I swear those were his exact words.)

Turns out, it's hard to figure out what step of the process you are stuck on, and find a solution to the obstacle, when you don't understand how the process even works.

After a few years, I admitted to myself that, yes, perhaps I needed some assistance. I took a page from Skywalker's book and started by breaking the process into steps and attempting to identify where we were failing. For Skywalker, that meant asking his mom for more details. For his parents, that took the form of fertility testing. Lots of fertility testing. "Everything looks fine!" was the answer after every test, and I would (sometimes in my head, sometimes out loud) respond, "Define FINE..."

After months of ruling out possible fertility obstacles one by one (frustratingly so - I admit to wishing they could find some problem we could solve!), it was time to start treatments and hope that since no medical issue could be found, the process of conceiving just needed a little nudge. It turned out to be a lengthier process than we had hoped, but we did at long last succeed. I will spare you the time-intensive and physically/emotionally/financially taxing roller coaster of hope and heartbreak from the years that followed, and jump straight to the happy ending!

In the fall of 2019 we decided to try one more round of IVF - our last one, no matter the outcome. At the end we got the good news that the blood test indicated a developing pregnancy. We were happy, but also hesitant to believe the initial result for fear of disappointment. Ultrasounds over the next several weeks confirmed a heartbeat - TWO heartbeats actually - and showed continued, concordant growth! Slowly our unease faded, and the scale on which balanced our anxiety and elation began to tip in favor of positivity. We gradually wrapped our brains around the idea of bringing two little beings into the world at the same time, and going from a family of 3 straight to a family of 5. We worked to come to terms with a variety of ways that two babies would change our plans. For example, adding one child to our tiny apartment may have been possible, but two seemed too much of a stretch, so it was time to look for a bigger place. Buying our first house would have been a big undertaking in any circumstance, but was particularly arduous in the midst of a pandemic, virtual school for the 8yo, and a twin pregnancy!

Next up - How We Got Here part 2: Gestation!

***All of my boys have pseudonyms for this blog

By Way Of Introduction

I only have 3 boys. Well, 5 boys if you count my husband and our gecko, plus 2 girls if you consider our 2 cats. But for the purposes of this blog, we'll focus on the human children and go with 3. For many that I know, "only" 3 kids is not much at all. They successfully and beautifully raise more. For others, 3 seems like a lot to split resources between - time, money, attention, space, etc. They have 1 or 2 and successfully and beautifully raise them. To me, 3 feels just right for our family. Which is good, because, as previously stated, that's what I have.

Two of my 3 boys are identical twins. There is a several-year gap between my oldest and the 2 little ones, because though we always knew we wanted at least 2 kids, it had taken several years of trying to add a second child to our family. And when we finally did, that second child became a second and a third simultaneously. Life is so unpredictable!

We knew they were identical from the beginning, because of how the IVF cycle went. Our older son waited anxiously to find out if he was getting 2 brothers or 2 sisters, and was thrilled when we told him he wouldn't be suddenly outnumbered! I initially felt overwhelmed at the idea of having 3 boys - and only boys - running around, and had hoped for a little balance, but I quickly got used to the idea of being a "mom of boys." I became excited to see their relationships develop and observe their exploits, both cooperatively and independently. Boys can be pretty fun!

The twins are about 3.5 months old now. I have toyed with the idea of starting a blog for several weeks, with the intent of documenting what will surely be adventurous years to come! I finally decided to give it a shot. This blog is partly a form of journaling for myself, and partly to share our journey with anyone who wants to come along for the ride and see what it's like to have twins. Obviously, this is not representative of all twins, or even all identical twins, or all identical twin boys! This is just our journey. Welcome aboard!