Our twins: the backstory

First of all, thank-you for all the sweet comments, emails, and Facebook messages regarding our big announcement! We are over-the-moon excited about the new direction life will soon take on. While June seems like a long ways away, it never fails to amaze me how quickly time goes. With twins, we are expecting to deliver early, and so in the grand scheme of things it is not too far away at all. There is a lot to think about until then!

I know some of you are waiting for the backstory. Yes, the ER visit about 3 weeks ago was related to this. I knew at the time that I was already pregnant and was having horrible left sided pain. I went in to "play it safe", as that is a warning sign of an ectopic pregnancy. After 7 hours, lots of tests, an ultrasound, and waiting---the doctor came in about 1 in the morning to tell me that I had a ruptured ovarian cyst. The pregnancy was fine. My eyelids were half open and I was half asleep. Then---she said---"there's something else I have to tell you! There are TWO gestational sacs that we can clearly see!"

My eyelids opened mighty quickly. WHAAT?! I was thrilled! But--I am not going to lie. I was overwhelmed! I was there alone so had no one to "freak out" with.

I called my mom in the middle of the night on the drive back to our house.

She was happy to "freak out" with me, as she is no stranger to the specialness of twins.

There is a long history of twins in my family. My mom's mom, my Grandma Elaine who passed away 2 years ago this Christmas, was a twin. She is the one on the left (I think).

In Grandma Elaine's family of 14, she had 2 OTHER sets of twin siblings in addition to her and her twin sister.

My dad's sisters, Jean and Joan, are twins. I wish I had a pic of them to share!

My dad has a set of twin cousins.

My first cousin and his wife had twins earlier this year.

Travis' mom (my mother-in-law, Pam) is a twin.

Travis' maternal grandmother is ALSO a twin. She hails from a family that has another set of twins as well!

Travis' first cousin has twins.

Twins, twins, twins, twins, twins.

Since it was still quite early when I went in through the ER that night, I didn't want to jinx our miracles by sharing our excitement with the world. It's not unheard of to have one twin reabsorb that early on. We decided to wait until we heard 2 strong heartbeats at our first routine doctor appointment to do any "announcing".

It was supposed to be this coming Thursday.

However, when I went for my initial OB visit this past Friday, which is intended to be a visit with a nurse only, the nurse decided to ask a doctor to come and do a bedside ultrasound.

There they were. Two beautiful, perfect heartbeats staring back at us. I was so excited, I nearly cried! Travis wasn't with at this visit either as the first nurse visits are typically VERY uneventful.

The doctor was unable to get a picture with both fetuses on the same screen. They are actually camped out on different sides of my uterus completely, though the picture doesn't make it look that way. They are nice and far apart, which is good.

Toot & Puddle will fit in beautifully in this family full of twin craze!

I'm feeling okay. Not great, but okay. The nausea has seemed to let up somewhat. (knock on wood!) I am exhausted ALL.THE.TIME. That's part of the reason I have been blog MIA lately. I already look 12 weeks pregnant and I'm guessing within the next 2 weeks will have moved into maternity clothes.

With Emersyn, I didn't start wearing maternity clothes until 4 1/2 months.

The doctor wasn't lying when she said things would go quicker this time!

There's more to this "backstory" that I will save for another date.

Hope you all had a great weekend!