Twin Pregnancy Diary – The First Nine Weeks (Part 2)

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On my way out of the hospital I text Mike. I can’t remember exactly what I said but it was something along the lines of “Everything is ok but I need to talk to you about something.”

He text back, “It’s twins isn’t it?”

How did he do that?

On the way home I cried. I mean, I know all about singleton pregnancies inside out but now, this was all new territory. It was different. And I was bleeding. I could lose two babies. Losing one is bad enough but to lose two…

Irrational, I told myself. I had only just left the scan where the babies are perfect, their heartbeats are strong and regular and there is no bleeding. All signs were good. So why wasn’t I reassured?

I got home and went straight upstairs with Mike following. I handed him the sonographer’s findings.

He began reading through and then he reached the part where it was written:

“Pregnancy 1…” and then, further on, “Pregnancy 2….”

“It’s what I said, isn’t it?” he asked.

“It’s twins!” I nodded.

Well, talk about a calm reaction. You’d think I’d just told him what I was going to cook for dinner. I, in the meantime, was still shocked.

I spent the rest of the day checking Facebook. A friend of mine had given birth to twins only two weeks earlier. She’d posted pictures of her growing bump throughout her pregnancy. At the time I looked and thought “Aaaah” and clicked “Like” and moved on, not thinking much more about it. That evening I was obsessed.

“I’m going to be HUGE!” I hissed at Mike when the kids were in bed. “Look at Fiona! LOOK!”

And for the rest of that weekend Fiona had her very own stalker.

There was no more spotting that weekend. I was again starting to relax a little. Maybe everything would be ok. Until it began again on the Tuesday. Straight away I thought of the worst.

I’d spent the weekend Googling. Google is a great thing but it’s also a bad thing. Ever heard of vanishing twins? No, I hadn’t until I googled. I was now convincing myself that the spotting was one of the twins vanishing. I had visions of us all going for the 12 week scan, children and all, and only finding one baby instead of the two we were expecting. You’d think I would know myself well enough by now to realise that I can quite sufficiently find enough to worry about without the added help of Google. Obviously not.

Knowing that it would likely take at least a week for another referral to EPAC I decided to contact a private clinic for a viability scan. By the time they called me back a couple of days later the spotting had once again stopped. I was feeling a little more positive and didn’t book a scan. I spotted again on Saturday morning. I immediately rang the clinic and booked the scan for that afternoon. I would be nine weeks exactly.

The day dragged and once again I got the nervous knot in my stomach in the hours leading up. Once again bracing myself for the worst, I followed the consultant into the room while Mike and the children stayed behind in the waiting room.

Another thorough check and no cause could be found for the bleeding. The babies were both fine. More than fine, they were strong and healthy and measured spot on to their dates.

Twin 1 had grown from 13.8mm from the first scan to 21.2mm eight days later, with a heartbeat of 176bpm.

Twin Pregnancy Diary is available to buy in paperback now.

You can read the rest of our Twin Pregnancy Diary available on Kindle at Amazon.

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