Twinspiration

Having twins is an amazing, and right now exhausting, adventure. I have always been intrigued with moms of twins and have often found myself seeking out frienships with such moms. I thought having twins would be a challenging and fun experience, but after the birth of our third son I thought my chances of having twins were getting slim. My husband wanted to stop at two children, I convinced him to go for another. Once we had number three, he was done. Then, three years later, he had a brief moment of insanity and said he thought it would be okay to have another. Actually the brief moment lasted a couple of months as we weren't successful at first.

We found out we were having twins in late spring. I was 35 and there is a new genetic test given to moms involving an ultrasound and blood test at 12 weeks gestation. We were very excited about the ultrasound, to see our new baby and hopefully to find out the gender. The idea of having another baby to "try for a girl" is a bit outrageous to me, but we were excited nonetheless. We sat in the waiting room with our then 5 and 3 year-olds, Trent and Lance, and they were running late with their appointments. Finally we get into the room and the technician puts the cold jelly and paddle on my belly. Two little babies appear on the screen. Steve and I looked up at the screen, looking and looking and trying to understand what we were seeing. The technician asked us if we knew we were having twins, a bit annoyed that her schedule was about to be even more late as she had two babies to examine. As she saw my tears and Steve's dumbfounded reaction, she changed her tone to more congratulatory than annoyance.

Though we didn't find out the sexes of the babies that day, we had a lot of fun calling up everyone we knew and telling them. Their reactions were great! As we drove home from the appointment and had lunch together, Steve and I continually looked at each other and shook our heads. We couldn't believe we were going to have five children!

The reality of being pregnant with twins is that it's not much fun, especially in the end. All of my previous pregnancies had been perfect and I loved being pregnant. This pregnancy was a little more scary because the doctors wanted to see me more often and I had to also see a neonatalogist (a high-risk baby doctor). Fortunately, I felt good with this pregnancy until the beginning of September. We got back from a day trip to celebrate Steve's grandmother's 95th (!) birthday and my back really hurt. I went straight to bed that night. As the pregnancy continued, I started to feel worse and worse. My back hurt, I was having contractions, and babies were pushing my belly in most uncomfortable ways.

At 31 weeks I was put on bedrest, I relief for me but a most unwelcome burden for Steve. He was not only responsible for "making pennies" at work, now he had the added responsibility of taking over for me. Thankfully his parents we willing and able to help us out. Phil and Joyce graciously helped out with the kids and the household so Steve could go to work. It was stressful for everyone, but we are forever grateful to have had all the help!

Early on Thanksgiving morning, my water broke. Kate was born at 8:00 and Luke was born 11 minutes later with Apgar scores of 9 for both of them. We are truly blessed! Now the work really begins!