Pregnancy story

The main reason I’m writing this is because I never want to forget a single detail of my pregnancy.

The Discovery
I found out I was pregnant on March 6th 2013. It was a Wednesday evening I had just gotten home from coaching cheer practice and made dinner. After dinner I convinced Taylor that we should go get a pregnancy test, or actually like 5 pregnancy tests. We rushed home and the 20 minute drive seemed to take an eternity. I took the first test, it was the kind that if it showed one line you weren’t pregnant and if it showed two lines you were pregnant. The packaging said it will take three minutes. It was more like 3 seconds. And BAM two lines.
Test number 2…3 seconds go by and BAM two lines
Test number 3…3 seconds go by and BAM two lines

Ar this point we were convinced. We looked at each other and just smiled and kissed and held each other for a minute. Then we started jumping around and dancing with joy and excitement. And then Taylor started singing every country song that talks about having a baby. There are not really words to describe the feeling we had. But here’s my attempt: surprise shock,joy, nervous in love, scared, happy, excited.
It’s been almost a year since that night and I still remember the exact feeling.

The Reveal
We wanted to tell our family all together. Because of difficult schedules we had to wait two weeks to tell them. Holy moly guacamole. You may not know this about me but I am about the worst secret keeper on the face of the planet. Those two weeks were crazy hard. Anyway, one of my art students is an amazing photographer so we decided we wanted to have our photos done and that’s how we would reveal to our family we were pregnant. I am forever thankful for these photos. Thank you Amanda Christine Photography.

So one night once my whole family could be together, we told them that one of my students had taken photos of us and we wanted to show them. We played those photos as a slideshow on the tv. Once the last picture came on the screen my mom and two sisters in perfect unison looked at me, screamed, then jumped up off the couch and tackled me. Then my family, mom, dad, sisters, brother in law, nephew and nieces all caravaned down to my mother in laws house and played the slide show for her. It was a wonderful night, full of insane amounts of joy. I scheduled my first dr apt for when I was 9 weeks and we decided to wait to tell everyone until after my dr apt.

First Doctor’s Appointment
Taylor and I arrive and are called back to the ultrasound room. I lay on the table and Taylor sits in the chair across the tiny room. We were so excited to see the first glimpse of our little baby. The tech asked us a few questions and lathered my belly with that gross jelly stuff. Honestly I don’t remember anything she said because I was just so excited to see the baby on the screen. She put the monitor up to my belly for a second and then took it off. She looked at Taylor and said “you should move your chair over so you can hold her” this made a million thoughts run through my mind, was something wrong? He moved and then she put the monitor back on my belly and pointed to the screen and said “look, there’s two… Your having twins!” My response was something like “hahahaha… What? Wait, what?” We looked at the screen and she showed us what looked like two Lima beans with teeny tiny little beating hearts.

Taylor and I could not stop looking each other and giggling. We were like two kids in middle school when I teacher says poop. Haha. For the rest of the appointment about every two minutes we would look at each other and just giggle. It was almost as though we didn’t know what else to do. Our whole world had just been rocked and we were so excited and shocked. And then we started looking at each other and saying things like “oh that means two car seats” giggle giggle… “Oh that means two high chairs” giggle giggle.

Boys or Girls
At that first dr appointment they were able to tell us that our twins were identical because they share a placenta. Because I was pregnant with identical twins I was considered a ‘high risk pregnancy’ this meant I had to go to the perinataligist every two weeks. Which if you know me, was like telling me I had to eat dog poop. Haha bad analogy but my point is I hate going to the dr. Before I was pregnant I think I had been to the dr once in the last ten years. Anyways it turned out that I loved having to go every two weeks because that meant we got to see our babies up on the screen every two weeks and that Taylor and I would get to go on day dates every two weeks after our appointments. At our 14 week appointment we asked if she could tell if they were boys or girls. She said she was about 70% sure that twin A was a boy and twin B was a girl. After she left Taylor and I looked at each other very confused because the twins are identical so how could she say one was a boy and one was a girl. So we just assumed that they were both boys for the next two weeks til our next appointment. This time I was 16 weeks and we asked if she could tell if they were boys or girls. Both Taylor and I had convinced ourselves they were boys, but she showed us on the screen that they were definitely girls. That was a fun surprise! We planned a gender reveal party to take place two weeks later. (Why did I torture my self with having to keep so many secrets) Anyway we invited family and close friends to come over and wear pink if they thought they were girls and blue if they thought they were boys. We played silly games and ate tastey food.

And revealed we were having girls!

The Research
Once all the craziness settled down I began to do my research. I learned that most twin pregnancies don’t make it past 35 weeks. And that you need to eat a lot more calories, (which was awesome) and that you have to take more vitamins because your growing two babies instead of one. I did endless amounts of reading. I’m the kind of person that has fear of the unknown. I like to know everything a possibly can about something that way I know what to expect. But that’s not really possible with pregnancy, especially twin pregnancy. Everyone’s experience is so different, there really is no way to know what to expect. So I just had to trust God that everything would be fine.

The Rest
The first trimester certain smells made me really nauseas and every day at 11am I was nauseas. But I was incredibly blessed I never really had morning sickness. I was teaching and coaching but every Saturday I was so exhausted I pretty much stayed in bed all day. By the second trimester I was feeling pretty good again. But by the third trimester, we had moved to Texas in the summer heat, and I was huge and uncomfortable. But I was determined to defy the statistics of a “typical” twin pregnancy. My goal was to make it atleast 36 weeks and to vaginally deliver two happy healthy babies who didn’t have to go to the NICU. According to the research I had done this was a lofty goal. But I prayed like crazy that it would be Gods will for me to reach these goals. And what an amazing God we serve. At 38 weeks, I vaginally delivered two happy healthy babies who never had to leave my side. I am so insanely grateful. And I know I am truly blessed that everything went so smoothly.

Soon I will write the twins birth story, I promise.

Sorry this is a little lonnnngg. Like I said I just want to have this written down so I remember it all and maybe one day I can read it to my girls.