twins – Page 2 – The Koep House

Halfway!

February 14, 2019February 14, 2019Leave a comment

Dear Babies,

As I sit here this Valentine’s Day morning, I am so grateful and in love with your daddy. He’s amazing, he really is. And he is so excited to meet you! He went grocery shopping yesterday, and came home with outfits for you two (cute ones too?!?). It’s funny though, today I am 34 weeks and 5 days pregnant. I think they’d measure you to the hour if they could, ha. And boy if you guys haven’t already defied the odds!! A series of doctors had mommy and daddy very scared for quite some time, as they were pretty convinced we wouldn’t make it this far. I’ll tell you more about this another day, but for today let’s talk a different milestone: halfway.

Halfway!! 20 Weeks is halfway through a normal pregnancy (although term for twins is 37-38 weeks, not 40). But our 20 Weeks was a good milestone! I often think back to that day because it was so exciting. You see, our 20 week appointment was with a specialty high risk (because you are twins, that’s considered high risk!) clinic that was going to do an in depth growth ultrasound for twins. Plus, we would find out your sexes!!

You were growing! Around the 50th percentile they said! And the tech asked us, did we want to know what the babies sexes were? We said YES PLEASE! You see, when we thought it was just one baby (so so long ago!) we thought nah, let it be a surprise! But two babies… well that WAS our surprise… so we wanted to know! And of course, both very much girls. Daddy had a misty eyed moment, and I asked him if he was ok. He looked into my eyes and said, “Will they still play with my tractors though?” I laughed! Of course! Because he will play them with you guys :):)

Leave it to Mommy to end a great week on a sour note though… somehow Mommy forgot after 29 years of being alive that the first snow in Minnesota is way slipperier than we remember. She promptly fell right on her bum on that first day of snow. She didn’t hit the belly though!!! But she did break (or very nearly because they couldn’t get the proper X-rays because all of the tiny baby bones that were in the way) her tailbone in the slip and fall incident. And oooooo-eeeee does that smart (still today!!). The second half of this pregnancy has been a horse of a different color. Tell you more later my little loves!

xoxo,

Mommy (& Daddy too!)

Scary Messes

February 5, 2019Leave a comment

Dear Babies,

This morning, I find myself thinking about the “how are we going to” and “how will we do” things with twin infants. Mommy and Daddy are not the neatest people. Don’t get me wrong, things are usually fairly clean, but I gotta be honest, sometimes dishes seem like too much, sometimes I forget that the vacuuming needs to get done, and Daddy and I are what I call “droppers” which means when we get home, everything we carry gets dropped on the kitchen table and most of the time does not get cleared up or put away. The dropping actually drives me crazy, but not crazy enough to change it, ha. So how are we going to adapt when there’s bottles everywhere and toys and burp rags? I know we’ll get it done, we’ll do the adulting, we will face the day. Hopefully you’ll forgive us our messes in the beginning.

There have been quite a few unsure moments in this pregnancy with you guys. It started way back at the cusp of the 2nd trimester. My first trimester was pretty much a breeze. I had next to no morning sickness, I didn’t puke at all. I had kind of strange symptoms like restless leg syndrome and I craved hot mayo (like on chicken sandwiches or BLTs, not by itself ew!) and nacho cheese. Our 12 week appointment, Daddy and I got to meet our OB together and we talked about what the rest of the pregnancy would look like and I was so full of hope and excitement! It was all going to be perfect, and frankly I attributed this to the fact that I hadn’t had any morning sickness. Silly me.

A few days after our appointment, I was now 13 weeks and I woke up in the morning and I was bleeding. I think that’s probably the moment that parent worry set in for the first time. I was so scared. Daddy was at work, Mommy was home alone, and I didn’t know what to do. I called my doctor’s office and the lady who answered was very calm and kind. She said, we’ll see you when you can get here and then proceeded to move mountains to make sure an ultrasound would be available when I got there. Daddy’s aunt (who is the same age as Mommy and Daddy) Shannon drove me to the hospital and stayed with me while I was biting my nails and nearly silent with tears rolling down my face.

They got us into an ultrasound, asked a bunch of questions, and then there you were on the screen. I could see your arms and heads and legs. I could see you moving! Our ultrasound tech, Jess, started talking about her experience with having twins and it calmed me down. She caught one of you sucking your thumb, and the other arching your back. It was a miracle. What she did not find was any reason for the bleeding. That reassured the doctors that everything was fine. It didn’t really reassure Mommy, but she tried really hard to trust the doctors. They told her to give it a couple days to subside and then we would go from there. So I did. This happened on Monday, and Thursday Mommy was still bleeding and now having some pain. So we went back to the doctor. Again, they couldn’t find a reason for the bleeding. Finally Sunday, the bleeding stopped.

Just waving, letting us know you were ok 🙂

That was the scariest week of my life at that point. I think it was made extra scary because there was so very little evidence of you to the outside world. I wasn’t showing, I couldn’t feel you move yet, it just felt surreal. But you guys are troopers, let me tell you! After that scare, Mommy had a new appreciation for doctors and the craziness of the OB department.

Babies, we really can’t wait to meet you (but we will wait, please stay in there for the whole time you’re supposed to!) and we are so excited. I think now that I’ve written this, I’m going to put some of the dropped items that are on the kitchen table into their proper homes! Or maybe I’ll sit and watch my belly from out here as I can see you roll around and move and stretch. I gotta say, that’s a better show than anything they can put on TV.

Love you my babies,

Mommy (and Daddy too!)

First letter to the babies

February 3, 2019Leave a comment

I can’t believe I haven’t written anything to/about/for the babies yet. It’s kind of crazy to think this girl with a degree in writing hasn’t done that yet, so I’m gonna take a stab at it.

Dear Baby A and Baby B,

That’s what they call you… Baby A and Baby B. We are pretty sure we know your names, but we’re gonna wait until you’re here to make sure they fit you before we start using them. What we do know is that you’re both girls! You guys were not shy about telling the ultrasound tech that part: NO QUESTIONS AT ALL. (Watch now one of you will be a boy and I’ll have to eat my words… except the ultrasound tech says no way, you’re girls!)

Your daddy and I are SO excited to meet you because I tell you what, this has been a crazy ride! My pregnancy with you guys has been so out of the box! First off, when Mommy took the pregnancy test, it was BLAZINGLY positive, but we didn’t think anything of it. Mommy had a littttttle bit of bleeding in week 6 so when we went in for our first 8 week appointment, the doctor’s office had us do an ultrasound, just in case.

They popped us into the ultrasound room and started to move the wand around to take a peek. They didn’t put you up on the monitor yet; I think this was in case something was wrong. Anyway, the ultrasound tech says, “Oh this is lovely, let me put this up on the screen for you to see!” When she turned on the screen, I had my first experience with looking at the inside sound waves of my body. It was a strange map that I couldn’t yet read. The tech took the cursor over one section and said, “Ok here is your uterus there, and then if we look here that’s Baby A.” My breath caught in my throat as she moved the cursor again and said, “And here is Baby B!”

My jaw hit the floor. Daddy let a couple tears slip! We had talked about the possibility of how there are twins wayyyyy back in Mommy’s family and how Daddy’s got lots of them sprinkled in here and there. But we never really thought it would happen to us. Sure enough, there were two healthy babies with their own placentas and gestational sacs. They call this dichorionic diamniotic twins, or di/di for short. It’s the least dangerous of twin types to carry.

Daddy and I were over the moon to be pregnant, but I’ll be very honest, it was a HUGE shock to know that two of you were coming! It changed every scenario we had imagined about having a baby and we had a LOT to learn. There’s a lot that’s different in preparing for twins: two of everything, should we do matching outfits, what kind of stroller is best, the kind of house and car we would need, and so much more.

The one thing we did not think of was how a twin pregnancy could have some more unexpected (the books don’t prepare you for what Mommy has been through so far!) medical complications arise. But I’ll get into that more later.

Two babies. Daddy and I say that to each other with a look of amazement all the time. And we can’t wait to meet you. Doctors have a c-section set up to get you here safely on March 7th! We will see if you guys will wait that long or if you have another plan for us. Only God knows!

Love,

Mommy (and Daddy too!)