Twin Pregnancy Diary – 16 weeks 2 days

 
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Another week of pregnancy has flown by.  I don’t feel like I’m very much bigger than last week.  What do you think?

I’ve been searching all week for signs of reassurance that everything is still going well.  This pregnancy lark is so worrying, no matter how many times you’ve been through it before.

I’ve been getting the doppler out every couple of days in order to play hide and seek with the twins.  It takes a while but I’ve found them in the end, not giving up and tracing over every single centimetre of my belly until I finally find the heartbeats.  The saying goes that if the heartbeat sounds like a train chugging along then baby is a boy, but if it sounds like a galloping horse then the baby is a girl.  Also, if the beats per minute are over 140 it means that baby is a girl and under 140 for a boy.  I haven’t tried counting the beats as they are so active I can barely get a few straight seconds before I’m having to play chase with the babies to track them again.  They both sound like trains though.  Given that these aren’t scientific theories at all and just old wives tales I don’t take much notice of them.  It’s fun to do though and then see what the outcome is on Birth-Day.  The last few babies all had train heartbeats and they all turned out to be boys.  I have nothing to compare it to though, as our last girl was almost twelve years ago now.  Long before I even dreamed of being able to own a doppler of my own.  Within another 20 years it wouldn’t surprise me if pregnant women could buy their own portable ultrasound machines to get a glimpse of their baby whenever they wanted.  How cool would that be?!

Once I’ve reassured myself that the babies are fine in their little cocoons I then obsess about not having felt them move yet.  I know it will happen when it will happen and that no two pregnancies are the same.  Heaven knows I’ve felt first movements anywhere from 15 weeks to 22 weeks and so I’m well aware of how vast and varied the gestational period can be whereby you are aware of the tiny flutters.

But I lack patience. 


So what I do is lie on the bed at night perfectly, perfectly still and wait.  The problem is I am so perfectly, perfectly still and concentrating so perfectly, perfectly hard that without realising I am perfectly, perfectly asleep.

At 16 weeks the babies are each approximately 12cm’s from crown to rump and are about to embark on a growth spurt.  The belly pic’s are sure to be interesting over the next few weeks is all I can say!  And I’m definitely going to need bigger maternity clothes.  Oh joy.

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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