TWINS!

I found out on April 25th that I'm having TWINS! It was my first doctor appointment. I found out because they did an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay with the baby (I don't remember having an ultrasound this early with Titus). The ultrasound screen was turned toward the doctor so I couldn't see it. As soon as the picture came up the doctor said "oh!" My first thought was, "oh my gosh, there's no baby in there. Something's wrong!" Twins hadn't occurred to me...ever! Then the doctor looked at the nurse and said "I guess we should show her" The ultrasound photo that you see in this post is what they showed me. She said "There's two!" I couldn't believe it! My heart started beating fast and I think I was in shock. Luckily my appointment was late in the day and I still had to pick Titus up from a friends house so I was occupied until Eric came home and I was able to share the news with him. Now that we have gotten over the shock of it, we are really excited about it. We know it will be hard but I think ultimately, it will be so fun to have 3 kids really close in age.

Everyone has lots of questions about twins and how this came about. Our most common question as soon as we share that we are having twins is, "Do twins run in your family?" Eric took it upon himself to do some research on twins so he could give people an educated answer when people ask that question. Here's some information from Dr. Armstrong:

Twins are primarily a random occurrence and not genetic. A little over 3% (~3 in 100) of births in the United States are twins. There are two types of twins: identical and fraternal. Let me explain a little bit about the two. Monozygotic (identical) twins occur when one egg is fertilized to form one zygote. The zygote spontaneously and randomly splits to form two separate embryos with almost identical DNA. Since this is a random and spontaneous event, the statistics are the same worldwide, and about 1 in every 1000 births are monozybotic twins. Dizygotic (fraternal) twins, however are much more common. Dizygotic twinning occurs when two eggs are fertilized to form two separate embryos. Part of the reason this is more common is because of fertility drugs. There is a genetic link for dizygotic twins, but only in females, and that due to hyper ovulation. There is no genetic link for males and twins. Therefore, it is very unlikely that the occurrence of twins in a family is genetic, but for some reason this is the most commonly asked questions. Because dizygotic twins are much more common than monozygotic twins, the probability is a little less than 50% that we will have boy and girl fraternal twins, a little less than 25% fraternal boys or girls, and about 0.1% of having identical boys or girls. There are ways of narrowing down whether the twins are fraternal or identical (other than if they are a boy and girl) based on the number of placentas, but there is no guarantee that we will be able to see them in the ultrasound as it is more difficult after 14 weeks because they will be so close together they will look like one. If the twins are in two different amniotic sacs (ours are) and share one placenta, they are almost always identical. If there are two placentas, there is still a very small chance that they are identical, but are most likely fraternal.

We find out on July 9th at my 20 week ultrasound what we are having! Obviously, we are thrilled with whatever we get. A few more weeks until we know for sure. Pray for cooperative babies on the 9th!!