I am by nature a planner. Given my propensity to try and plan out every last detail, my recent pregnancy certainly presented a unique challenge for me. Not to say that the pregnancy itself was unplanned—due to some past medical issues, my husband and I ended up needing to resort to IVF to conceive (more on that in an upcoming post). So elated was probably a better word to describe our feelings after finally having a positive pregnancy test.
I scheduled my first OB visit at exactly 8 weeks which was the earliest they generally would see someone. The doctors at the IVF clinic had warned that the drugs I was on could sustain a non-viable pregnancy, so I tried to steel myself in case there was not a heartbeat on the ultrasound. I think the doctor could tell I was nervous because he did his best to engage me in casual conversation as he spread the ultrasound gel on my stomach, explaining that the transvaginal ultrasound machine was out for cleaning so he may have to send me down to radiology if the baby didn’t cooperate. I just nodded, staring at the screen to try and discern something that would indicate the baby was okay.
Suddenly, the OB paused, squinting at the screen briefly before saying, “I am going to send you down to radiology.” Before I could go into full-on panic mode, he added, “I see two sacs here.”
To say I was surprised would be an understatement. I think I said something inane along the lines of, “Good thing we only transferred one embryo.” Which was true. Given my age and the quality of the embryos retrieved, the doctors had recommended a single embryo transfer, explaining that identical twins were slightly more likely with IVF (studies indicate somewhere between 2-10 times more likely which means still rare). All I have to say is thank God we listened—having twins was shock enough. I can’t even imagine how we would have handled triplets.
Fortunately, the ultrasound showed two beating hearts, so I had the fun task of telling my husband when I picked him up from the airport that afternoon. He just laughed. We had joked about having twins but neither of us had truly expected it to happen given the single embryo transfer. But hey, maybe it would be fun. At the very least, it’s more efficient to have two at once, right?
I had a very normal twin pregnancy. Actually, I would say it was about as good as anyone could reasonably expect a twin pregnancy to be. I had very little nausea during the first trimester, and what I did have could be easily combated by eating a snack in the mornings. I had the expected burst of energy during the second trimester which allowed me to help my husband finish the masonry heater and even carried over a bit into the third trimester which I spent cleaning. I was able to keep jogging through month six and taking long walks through the very end of the pregnancy. And my aches and pains were limited to some heartburn at night and back pain in the car (for some reason, that’s the only time it cropped up—even though I sat for a longer period of time at work). Each ultrasound they did (and I had to have a lot) showed two babies who were growing concordantly at the expected rate for their gestational age.
I don’t say this to make other twin mothers out there jealous. I say this to help others not make the same mistake I did—namely, assuming that because the pregnancy was so smooth, everything else would go smoothly as well. I admit, I got complacent. My OB mentioned that they would typically induce around 38-39 weeks if I had not gone into labor before then, so I started doing the math to figure out the day that I wanted to give birth. My sister was betting the babies would be born in mid-March (they would have been about 38 weeks at that point), and I (somewhat unconsciously) assumed the same, scheduling tasks up until the 38 week mark.
Thus when I started bleeding a bit at 35 weeks, 4 days, I panicked at first but quickly calmed myself down by reminding myself how smoothly everything had gone up until that point. I spent an hour or so scouring the internet and finally decided that I had lost my mucous plug (I won’t go into the gory details of what that means—suffice to say you can find them if you want) but that did not necessarily mean the onset of labor, especially since I wasn’t feeling any contractions. Still, I dutifully called the OB office, and the nurse there told me to go into the hospital just in case. I called my husband, and he drove me there that afternoon (yes, we decided to stay at work for another couple hours to finish things up—honestly, probably a wise decision given subsequent events). On our way, we were actually discussing the likelihood that I would be sent home, and we settled on 70/30 odds.
Once we managed to find out where to check in for L&D triage, the staff was very kind and prompt, and I soon found myself in a hospital bed as they ran various tests to make sure things were okay. They hooked me up to two fetal monitors, and it was definitely reassuring to see the two heartbeats on the screen beside me. All of the staff seemed relaxed and unconcerned, and I mentally began to increase the odds that I would be going home that night.
About an hour after we arrived, the resident who had performed the tests returned. She was smiling, and I will admit, I started to push out of the bed, assuming it was time to go. But her next words stopped me in my tracks. “There was amniotic fluid when we tested. Looks like your water broke. You’re not leaving here without having those babies.”
I just stared at her and then at my husband. I certainly hadn’t felt my water break. Hollywood had taught me to expect a large gush of fluid at the most inconvenient time possible, but there had not been any such occurrence. And I definitely was not feeling contractions. Of course, they would soon fix that—the resident explained that at my current gestational age, the risk of infection was greater than that of prematurity so they would be starting me on a Pitocin drip to speed labor along. With that, the nurse launched into the standard preadmission questionnaire and my brain finally caught up to what was happening. Almost as soon as it did, I went into panic mode. The nursery was still missing a ceiling. We hadn’t set up either of the cribs. My in-laws were not closing on their house for another couple days, so they were not yet around, and I had planned for them to take the dog. My hospital bag was still missing a couple items that I had just washed the previous day.
In the end, things worked out just fine. I gave birth to two healthy baby girls who fortunately both avoided a NICU stay. And I think the various surprises in the pregnancy helped to better prepare me for what to come. I’m still very new to this parenthood thing, but I’ve definitely learned that you have to expect the unexpected. Experts may say that kids crave routine, but I wonder how they’re defining the word. Sure, babies do the same basic things every day (eat, sleep, poop, repeat). However, when they do each thing varies more than I expected each day (and varies from baby to baby which adds an additional wrinkle). We’ve been trying to nudge the girls toward something more predictable, and it’s starting to work, but for the most part, I’m learning to let go of some of my Type A tendencies and embrace the stage of life I’m in—messy and unstructured and frustrating as it may be. It’s definitely difficult for me to do, and I will admit that I don’t always enjoy it. But I’m trying to do so because I feel that we can’t live our life always looking forward to the next thing or we’ll come to the end of it without ever having enjoyed life. And so I’m making a conscious effort to treat each day as a blessing to be cherished, sleep deprivation and all.
