Hello Tired Troopers!
So, as you know from my About Page, I’m a lucky mother of twins! But you also know I didn’t think I’d ever feel lucky for having twins… Twins run in my family… on both sides… so I guess chances were pretty good I’d end up with twins…? BUT I DID NOT WANT TO! Because of that, my immediate family thought it was funny to joke about it. Which I did not think was funny. I’d actually get pissed. I was dead set against it. So much so that I’d make a joke about giving each half a medallion at birth, then years later if they ever found each other again, well that’s just a good day for everyone… (Yes I’m THAT dark, yes, I stole this joke from the show Friends, it was hilarious, so i used it!) Hello?! It fit perfectly! The funniest jokes have some truth to them after all…
So, if twins ran on both sides of my family, why was i so against it?! Welp to put it plainly none of the twins in my family had good relationships with each other. One set grew up and chose completely different religions, which would have been fine, but they doubled down by not respecting each other’s beliefs… yikesx1000. Another set were absolute polar opposites. One was sweet and gentle and kind, the other was crazy and lashed out and ended up in prison… yikesx10000000. The other set was just plain weird and again one ended up being the sweet caring one while the other was mean and judgmental. Barf. Now, I’m a big believer in nature vs nurture and I know that parenting (or lack thereof) contributed to a lot of how they ended up – but still, having seen first hand how multiple generations of twins turned out resenting each other was enough to freak me out and completely turn against the thought of it!
Then, growing up I also had multiple sets of friends who were 2 years or less apart from their siblings. This caused major, major, issues with schooling, crushes, sports, academics, practically everything! YIKES, YIKES, YIKES!!!!!!! NO THANK YOU!
Now, I’ve also met twins who were complete 1000000% best friends, but sadly that wasn’t the norm that I had witnessed…
Now, back to parenting… my mother is not perfect (no one is). BUT, she always wanted a close relationship with her sister that she never got growing up, so she was bound and determined to make my sister and I close. Which took A LOT of work. Everyone would always say, aww you two are so close, you guys, like, never fight. Well, we were close, but we fought, of course we fought! We were siblings after all! And the 3-year-age difference was big when we were little. Mom would dress us in the same clothing, just different sizes and different colors, but always matching, ugh!!! I really grew to resent this. I didn’t want to be dressed the same as my 4 year old sis at 7! Then there was the whole I didn’t want my ‘lil sis constantly following me and my friends around and copying my every move! (Today I LOVE when she copies me, so sweet – what a compliment!) But back when we were really little it was just annoying sometimes! Then, the tables turned lol we got a little older and I would get bored and want her to go play sports with me outside, well she became a bookworm and only wanted to sit and read. So, it goes both ways!
My mom stuck by her guns through it all. One of her more genius tactics was to literally make us “kiss and makeup up”. It didn’t matter where either! We’d start bickering in the store, nope! You guys kiss and make up, right here, right now! Mom kept this rule up so long that once we were older I’d smile and look at my sister and go, “ok” and go in open mouthed! This grossed my sister out and we’d both end up laughing. So it ended up taking us from fighting together to laughing together. That tactic isn’t perfect for everyone, but it sure worked for us! Now that we are full-blown adults our mom constantly jokes about how our closeness comes back to bite her in the a**, like when we out vote her or gang up on her, but it’s still all in good fun. I’m not going to do exactly what my mom did, but I’m absolutely going to work just as hard as she did to ensure my kids are close. They both lucked out and got a built-in best friend for life, they can’t take that for granted! I’m definitely going to take my mom’s core principles and see what works for my kids.
You also know from My Precious Poppy post that I lost my first pregnancy. So, when I got my hCG test results and it was so much higher it gave me a lot of hope! I just kept talking to my little baby in my belly saying, you hang on, you just stay in there! Well I dusted off my copy of What To Expect When You’re Expecting (I purchased that book the first time I got pregnant… then threw it under the bed out of heart break when I lost the first pregnancy…). I also found the book, Bringing Up Bebe, which I fell in love with! Well one night I was up late reading Bringing Up Bebe when I put down the book and just thought about how lucky I was to finally be pregnant again and how if this was twins – well… that wouldn’t be the worst thing after all… I couldn’t believe it… from dead set against it to huh, that might actually be kinda cool… what?! But I was actually… kind of… hoping… deep down… that it would be… twins! I was absolutely SHOCKED, but it just felt right all of a sudden. Like a warm hug, or a new crush, that’s the feeling I had.
Well the amount of time they make you wait between that first pregnancy test and your first ultrasound is criminal! My positive pregnancy test was 12/28 and my first ultrasound was 2/4. I get it, I did the research, u need to typically wait at least 8 weeks to be able to confirm the pregnancy via ultrasound.. blah blah blah… I was uber impatient lol I mean, it took FOREVER to get pregnant the second time! Then, the day finally came!! I was equal parts freaked out, scared and excited. Small side bar here – if you’ve never had an ultrasound typically the first one is done with a vaginal wand ultrasound. You don’t get the belly one until your farther along. I didn’t know that, my sis (a nurse) told me that would happen. So luckily I was able to tell my husband as well so at least we were both prepared. Cause that would have been a shock lol! You want to put what, where?! That’s not what they show on TV! 😂
The ultrasound started and there was a big screen TV up in front of us showing what the tech was seeing on the computer screen. Well just like the movies it’s all black and white and wavy. It didn’t look like anything or at least we couldn’t make sense of anything. Plus I couldn’t see anything either, so I immediately started panicking thinking I lost this pregnancy too because to me it looked like a vast empty void! Well the tech is looking around and making small talk… “Is this your first pregnancy? Oh wow, first kid for both of you, how exciting.” Then she got real quiet. Like stopped talking all of a sudden. I looked at the screen and actually saw something… it looked like 2 circles, but again I had no idea what we were looking at! I held my breath, was there a baby in there or not?! Was there anything in there?! It felt like 20 mins of silence when it was actually like 15 seconds in reality. Then she goes, “Huh ok… yep, ok…. See that? There’s TWO babies in there, yep that’s two.” I immediately started crying tears of joy. My husband goes, “I knew it!” I laughed, but sucked it up real quick cause with every cry/laugh the camera jumped and I needed to see these two little miracle babies!!! There they were, baby A and baby B. Unreal! She printed us out a few pictures.
Side bar: Baby A is always the baby that is closest to your cervix, and therefore will be the first born whether you have it vaginally or via c-section.
Hubby and I were on cloud 9 and in shock sitting there with a photo strip souvenir of actual proof that not only were we 100% pregnant, we were going to have TWO BABIES! We rushed right over to my mom’s house to show her. I decided to just hand her the strip of pictures instead of telling her it was twins to see her figure it out for herself. It took her about 5 seconds and she yelled when she realized and looked at us shocked, then cried happy tears. Funniest part was that she looked back at the pictures and goes, “Fetus C?! There’s a Fetus C?!” We laughed and told her the ultrasound tech messed up and accidently put “Fetus C” on one of the pics, and she couldn’t figure out how to change it, so she just told us to ignore the C, it was really just A and B. Too funny!
One of my favorite, albeit frustrating, sayings is “When you make plans, God laughs.” Welp I never had any intention to have twins and would legit get mad at the thought of it. But, God knows best and we were blessed with two perfect babies! And in hindsight, I hated being pregnant. You’re always tired, hormones SUCK, and my food aversions were the worst. Only cool thing was feeling the babies kick. Oh, and not having to “suck it in.” For more info read my blog on What Pregnancy Is Really Like/What They Don’t Tell You About Being Pregnant and my blog Don’t Suck It In. But with how long it took us to conceive the second time and the fact that I was a geriatric preggo, (I was 35) we might have not gotten the chance to have a second child. Yes, we were definitely open to adoption, but we were blessed with exactly what we were supposed to have. Not preaching… Buuuuuut, If you’re the least bit interested in God, try talking to him, it’s an amazing feeling knowing the Big Guy has your back. He’s sure proved he’s got mine! My babies are walking proof! For more info see my blog: Got The Holy Spirit, It’s Not What You Think…
These are my actual little miracles first pictures ever!
(See Fetus C???)
Ok, so now you know… if you see this ⬆️on the screen, CONGRATULATIONS, IT’S MULTIPLES!!!
Side note, later on in our ultrasounds one tech said that sometimes with “twin” pregnancies there are actually 3 in there, but they don’t figure it out till later cause they just keep thinking they’re seeing 2… um, yeah, we only ordered one, ended up with a buy-one-get-one-free situation, so we’re good… but this freaked me out for a while lol any of my fellow Tired Mamas who had triplets or above you are one tough Mother —!!!!!!