Bear with me… I am not a writer by any means. Josh’s entries
will most likely sound much more eloquent than mine, but I think this will be a means for us to share our story and relieve some bottled emotions.
Our journey started back in April of 2012. As many know Josh
posted an April fool’s joke saying we were expecting twins. I’m not entirely
sure how many comments there were about karma. At the end of April we found out
we were expecting again. We knew we wanted another baby and were excited that
it happened so easily. At 6 weeks pregnant I started having severe left lower
quadrant pain. Being a doctor and always expecting the worst I assumed I must
have an ectopic pregnancy. I made a couple of phone calls, called in a favor
and had an appointment to have a quick ultrasound that afternoon (instead of
going to the ED… which I avoid at all costs.) I happened to be seen by the
chair of the department for OB/GYN at the hospital, who is amazing I must add,
and as she was doing the ultrasound she had the screen pointed towards her. All
she said was… huh, that’s not what I expected. That of course freaked me out
and she spun the screen around for me to see. She asked me what I saw… All I
could think then was seriously I am in this position, afraid of the worst and
you are pimping me? Really? Then I looked and it was grossly obvious that there
were two sacs… both intrauterine. We found a heartbeat on one and a good
looking yolk sac on the second. She was very optimistic at that time and had us
follow up for another visit in two week with an in office ultrasound at that
time as well.
Our appointment two weeks later was with another of my
favorite physicians, Dr. Jaimey Pauli. She was an MFM fellow and delivered
Emma. She was just finishing her fellowship at the time of our appointment and
was staying on as an MFM attending. She did the usual workup for our first
visit and did a quick ultrasound. We saw both babies heartbeats at that
appointment but one was measuring significantly smaller than the other so we
were sent for a higher level ultrasound at the MFM office the next week.
The next ultrasound was much more reassuring. Everything
looked good at that time. Babies were measuring just a couple days apart which
is totally normal and they looked like di-di twins (diamniotic, dichorionic) or
fraternal. This was a huge relief for me as I knew we would not need to worry
about twin to twin transfusion syndrome. At that point because of my history of
preterm delivery of both Allison and Emma we transferred care to maternal fetal
medicine and started seeing them every 3 weeks.
The next several weeks were pretty similar to my previous
pregnancies. Horrible nausea and vomiting, feeling ridiculously tired and still
trying my best to get through the last couple months of residency. I do feel like I
started showing earlier with this pregnancy (I blame it on the fact that there
were 2, it may have just been bloating.) I also got over my nausea at about 16
weeks which was completely new for me. My pregnancies with both the girls I was
puking until the day I delivered so I felt very blessed and had this gut
feeling that at least one of these kiddos was a boy.
We introduced the idea of new brothers or sisters to the
girls. Emma wasn’t terribly interested at that point but Allison was so
excited. She told me we were going to have a girl and a boy and was completely
set on this from the beginning.
After several reassuring ultrasounds we felt safe to start
telling people of our amazing news. I knew twins would be difficult but knew we
could always have family and friends we could turn to and could not help but be
excited about the thought of having two babies.
We had our standard anatomy screening ultrasound at 20 weeks
to the day. It was a great day. Both babies looked perfect. They both weighed
in well and were growing right on track. We found out that we were expecting
our first boy (baby A) and another little girl (baby B). I left that
appointment feeling great and went out and bought our first little boy outfit that
week. Because of my history of preterm labor and difficulty with Emma’s
delivery they wanted to monitor me closely so we were brought back in 3 weeks
for another ultrasound to monitor growth and for a follow up appointment. That
appointment was 9/7/12 and probably ranked as one of the worst days of my life.
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