I started spotting labor day weekend, I was 7 weeks pregnant. I woke up in the morning to pee and there was blood. I started to panic and told dave, but I talked myself down. I knew there was nothing that we could do if I were to start bleeding heavily, that nature needed to take its course. So I waited a couple of hours because it wasn't flowing, just spotting. But it happened again a little later. So I called the drs office. It was Saturday, so they were closed and they would page the on-call dr. Thank goodness Dave's cousin's husband happened to be the dr. on call that day. He has such a calm and soothing demeanor that he made me not worry about it. He told me that if it would make me feel better, I could go to the lab and get blood drawn. I asked him what he would do if I was his wife and this was happening. He told me he would have me rest for the weekend and call him if it happens again and have blood drawn on Tuesday. So I told him thats what I would do for right now.
On Tuesday, I went to the lab to have my hcg level drawn. Wednesday, I got a phone call that put a smile on my face. The nurse called me and told me that my hcg levels were high enough to see something on ultrasound and the dr wanted me to come in to have an ultrasound tomorrow. Tomorrow! I wasn't supposed to go to the drs to get checked out and get an ultrasound until I was 8 weeks pregnant and that was a week away, but now I get to see what was going on inside me tomorrow! I was nervous and excited and I could barely sleep that night.
Dave and I drove separate cars to the drs that day because we both had to go to work afterwords. I went in and filled out the paperwork nervously. Then we both sat down and watched their big screen flat panel tv. We laughed nervously at the babies in the magazines and then dave pointed to the screen because they were talking about twin pregnancies and he said to me, maybe we're having twins! I said no way, what are you smoking?? There's no way I was carrying twins...
I never realized that I never told dave that this first ultrasound was an internal ultrasound. So when we walked in and the ultrasound tech told me to take off my pants in the bathroom and come out with a sheet wrapped around me, he looked at her and looked at me with the most confused look on his face. I laughed and I told him it was ok, that it was just an internal ultrasound. So when the tech was looking, she turned the screen away from me probably because she wanted to make sure there was something there to see because of the bleeding. dave and i looked at each other nervously. Then she turned the screen to me and pointed and said there is a heartbeat here and pointed to another spot on the screen and said there is another one here and then turned the screen away and said I have to see if there are anymore. I looked at dave and he was jumping up and down saying I told you! I knew it! Thoughts of risks of twin pregnancies raced through my head, wait, did she say she was looking for more heartbeats???
After the ultrasound, the tech told us that everything was fine and to sit for a few mins so that she could get a dr to talk to us about the ultrasound. I sat there in shock. Twins? How did this happen? Did I release two eggs or did the eggs split? All the risks of a twin pregnancy went through my head again: increased risk for Pre-eclampsia and gestational diabetes, twin to twin transfusion, and not to mention how huge I was gonna get. What were we going to do?
Dr. Namkoong, dave's cousin's husband said he would take a few mins to talk to us. He explained to dave and I that our babies were identical. that it looked like they shared a placenta and that they each have their own gestational sac but share a chorionic sac. They were monochorionic diamniotic. He looked at me because I probably still had a look of shock on my face that was followed by worry. He asked me what was the matter. I told him that I was now a high risk pregnancy and I was worried about twin to twin transfusion. Dave said wait wait wait, what does that mean? Peter explained that twin to twin transfusion was like when two people are living in a condo: they each have their own living spaces, but they share a heating system. sometimes one person gets too much heat and the other side doesn't get enough. The placenta is the twins heating system but they each have their own living spaces. So we went on our way full of joy (and shock) of carrying not one baby but two babies.
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