In December last year, as we were preparing to move countries back to New Zealand from Australia, I found out we were expecting what we thought was our surprise 3rd baby.
To back track to approximately four weeks before that, we were in Japan on holiday. On our holiday we had an accident which is now referred to by us and our circle of friends as “one night in Tokyo”. It was in my lowest of fertile periods in my cycle (I have an app!) and so I said to my husband, look it’s very unlikely but what’s the bet it happens to us, I laughed. I continued the next four weeks without even thinking about it because the likelihood of it happening was just so low right?! We had spoken about a third baby in the past but my husband was not on board so it was definitely not on our radar or the agenda with so many life changes happening in our family.
Well four weeks later, my period never showed up so I started googling “how many days can a period be late?”. My periods had never been regular so it wasn’t unusual for my periods to come at different times but after about five days, I decided it was time to take a test and sure enough that test came back positive.
There was no denying it. Those two red lines were brighter than ever and as it all hit me I started crying and curled up in to the fetal position on my bed. My husband walked in and he knew immediately. This was not me being ungrateful that I was pregnant because I know what a blessing a baby is but the shock of it was overwhelming. This was not good timing and we were about to deal with a huge amount of stress of moving countries as well as starting new jobs.
That following week as I hit five weeks pregnant, I was ill. Very ill. I hadn’t experienced this level of nausea before and it was debilitating. I had minor nausea with Leo (none with Finn), but this I could not prepare for. My husband had to leave to go to NZ early to start work, so there I was on my own, pregnant, sick, looking after two kids and finalising everything including our furniture removal and cleaning our house out to leave it ready to be sold. Oh those were joyous times.
Despite being so ill, it never crossed my mind we were having twins. We had definitely joked about it in the past but that’s all it was. The boys and I arrived in to NZ when I was about 7.5 weeks pregnant to meet up with my husband and the following week I was booked in to have my dating scan. I took my two little men along with me, again completely unsuspecting.
The sonographer started the ultrasound and was having a little bit of trouble checking because my pelvis is tilted. We could see one little blob but she was slightly confused. And then she said it.
“I might have to do an internal exam just to check, because it looks like there’s two egg sacks there”, she looked over at me with a smile.
“Nooooooooooooo. No there’s not. You’re joking” was my response.
Finn then piped up from his seat after hearing and said
“Mum, how are you going to handle four kids” and then laughed hysterically to which I started laughing (with tears in my eyes) and so did the sonographer.
HOLY SHIT. Two babies!!! Every time I say it or write it still, it is still just so shocking to me..
When we picked up my husband from work, I handed him my phone with the ultrasound pictures and told him to take a look. He wouldn’t look at first and laughed nervously saying “it’s going to be twins, I know it”. He somehow has a sixth sense about these things which meant he wasn’t surprised but still just as shocked to see them actually there!
To answer a few questions I have had so far.
My grandmother had twins so that would assume the “skip a generation” theme is true. Twins appear nowhere else in both sides of our family that we know of.
Our twins are di-di twins which means they are in separate sacs with their own placentas. This usually means they are most likely to be fraternal, however if they are the same gender there is a chance they can still be identical (around 30%).
Obviously we would love to have a daughter, but we are very aware of the fact that we are probably going to end up with two boys! We love having boys and we just hope they remain safe in their little bubbles until they are born.
Once we got past the initial shock we felt extremely blessed and of course overly protective of these two little humans. It hasn’t been an easy pregnancy, nor a great time to be pregnant (especially one that is considered high risk) with all the stuff going on in the world and our family life but we will count our blessings every day.
I will be sharing more on the actual pregnancy in another blog post soon so keep an eye out.
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