Growing ...

I was doing my routine check in on the baby boards and was catching up on the TTC boards as well. One woman I sent some left over med/supplies to was in her second round of IVF. She has been updating the boards and her blog of her stats. For the past several weeks she was testing as pregnant but the numbers were low and not promising at all. Finally, after an early ultra sound, she has been told she's pregnant with twins!

Elated, to say the least, she updated everyone on the wonderful news and stated how she was so happy there were two as it bettered her odds that she's hopefully make it to term with at least one of the babies. This brought me right back to our situation at 7 weeks.

We were sitting in doc's office doing the vag-cam u/s and he said, "it's twins!" My first thought was, we have twice as good a chance to have a baby. "A" baby...wow. I think I felt this way for at least the first three months. Now that we've seen their heart beats and pictures over the past five months, they are different to me. I've been petrified to think of any future until we got past 20 weeks. "Friends" from the board as well as in real life have had the difficulty of dealing with a miscarriage at 20 weeks. Some losing one of twins/triplets at 20 weeks. So 20 WEEKS was a milestone for me, personally.

I voiced my concern with hon and she knew where it came from and we've both grown quite attached to BOTH babies. Women on the boards have described losing one twin and grieving while trying to stay positive and happy for the surviving, still growing twin. I can't imagine the split of emotion that comes with that.

Now that we're looking at 22 weeks I'm beginning to feel the future, scary as hell as that might be at times. We've discussed, online, that pregnancies are generally viable after 24 weeks but better at 28 + weeks. Obviously, beyond that is choice! We're feeling movement, mostly in my ribs (OUCH) and they have definitely made their presence known with the ever-expanding belly I can no longer get comfortable sleeping with. Everyone is excitingly and not-so-patienly waiting for them to arrive.

As I explained to "new mom to twins to be" it's understandable to think of this in a numbers game sort of way...it's all statistics, and odds, and science, after all. It keeps your spirits high and positive and optimistic and everything you need to be to get that little bean to stick! But something does happen as they grow and become more real and personable and significant. It's no longer a numbers game but they are your babies and that's it! Good luck, Bleu!