Silly Mom Thoughts

I know I saw the ultrasound yesterday. Even without the grainy picture they gave me, the image of those two little sacs carrying my two little babies is clearly etched in my mind. I saw one baby very clearly, and got a brief glimpse of the other one. Are there really two? Am I seriously going to have twins ?

It seems far too good to be true. In some weird place in my mind, I keep thinking there must be some mistake. There’s no way one person could be so lucky. A beautiful boy, a gorgeous girl, and now twins? What did I do to deserve such a blessing?

This thinking leads me also to thinking about how easily it could all be taken away from me. I shouldn’t think like that, I know, but that’s just how I work. Any negative thought that enters my mind, I think,  “You’d better knock that off, Lindsay, or something bad is going to happen.” Paranoid? Maybe. But when you feel as blessed as I do, you don’t want to take any chances on worthless, negative thoughts.

I am a firm believer that God doesn’t give you more than you can handle. He knew how badly I have always wanted twins, and I’m sure He knew what my elated reaction would be when I found out. He gave me my wonderfully lovable, but still trying Bug as practice for twins to come. He gave me Bean, in all her sweet sassiness for more practice. I’m not scared of twins. Sure, they’ll be lots of work and I’m sure I’ll have a few more gray hairs by the time they reach Kindergarten, but they’re babies. They’re miracles. How anyone could ever think their life was over simply for the fact that they’re having multiples is beyond me.

Turk and I started talking about having children long before we made our wedding vows. He always said he wanted two or three kids, I said I wanted four. He was worried about four kids financially. I said, time and time again, “It’s okay, we’ll have two kids  and our last one will be twins. I’ll get my four.” I was joking, of course, but wow how true that statement became! I was honestly prepared for only three. Three was my max, I realized after parenting for the past 3.5 years. Apparently God thinks otherwise and I won’t argue with his decision.

Now, I worry for two babies. I worry that by my next ultrasound one or both of them will have vanished. I worry that it is all too good to be true. But then, I think that maybe, just maybe, it’s all in how you look at things. Instead of seeing twins as a curse, I see it as an enormous blessing. Maybe it all depends upon your frame of mind.

Today’s post could have been a sad one. (Warning: This will include TMI.) Last night before bed, I went to the bathroom and wiped. There was a little bit of pink on the toilet paper.

No big deal, I told myself. It’s not red, it’s not very much, it’s nothing to worry about.

Of course, I sill found myself obsessing about it. About thirty minutes later, I went to the bathroom to check again and this time there was more blood. Still not bright red, and not enough to soak a pad or anything, but enough to make me worry. And worry I did. I crawled into bed, certain that I was going to wake up in the middle of the night gushing blood.

I didn’t cry until I turned to Turk and asked him to say a prayer for our baby and for me, to which he responded, “I have already said three, and I will say many many more.”

I had restless dreams, but still in my dreams I was pregnant. I woke up around 2am, went to the bathroom and to my relief, found nothing on the toilet paper. Still unable to sleep, I logged on to the writer’s forum and begged for prayers for my tiny tot and me. When I woke up in the morning, there were twelve messages of prayers and good thoughts waiting for me, even more trickled in as the morning progressed. Just knowing people were thinking of me made me feel like everything was going to be okay. I also texted and emailed a few people to ask for prayers, and they were on it like God Warriors.

Let me tell you, you all must have some serious connections with The Man Upstairs, because you’re prayers worked even better than expected.

I sat in agony in the waiting room for an hour until they called me back. I prepared myself for the worst. Though I hadn’t had any new spotting, brown stuff kept coming out. (I know, brown is okay, but when you’re pregnant, nothing that comes out of your body before the baby does seems okay.) Finally, they called me back. The doctor, a wonderfully friendly man who jokingly informed me, “I have to break it to you, Lindsay, but my kids are the cutest ever,” also explained that half of healthy pregnancies experience some sort of spotting. He said that at almost seven weeks (which I am), the placenta attaches itself to further prepare for baby, and sometimes that causes spotting. He explained that if I didn’t have cramping (which I did a little, but it’s tough to tell bad cramping from normal hey, my uterus is making room for baby cramping) and the spotting stopped and wasn’t bright red, then everything would be just fine.

Sitting on the crinkly paper, nervously shifting my weight back and forth, I kept praying in my head, Please, just let me have an ultrasound, please!

To my relief, his next sentence was, “It would really make the most sense to take a peek at the baby with a vaginal ultrasound if that is okay with you.”

Okay with me? Are you kidding dude?! You just made my day!

I smiled and said, “I would honestly appreciate that very very much.”

He wheeled the nifty ultrasound machine into the room where I was buck naked from the waist down sitting on one of those puppy pee accident mats. I rested back onto the pillow while the doctor put a condom on the wand. The irony never passes me, when I see the condom-protected ultrasound wand.

He sticks the sucker up there while I watch the screen next to me.

Wait a minute, I just saw two sacs. No way.

He maneuvers the wand around a bit and looks at me.

“Lindsay, do you see what I see?”

“Um, I see two. Are there two?!”

“There are definitely two babies in there!”

“Yesssssssss! Oh my gosh, I am so excited.”

My guess is that is not the customary response to finding out your child count is about to double, because the doctor and nurse both looked at me in shock.

The twins at 7 weeks (the two dark circles are the sacs)

I was beaming the entire time while the doctor got a picture of one of the babies and measured for size. A perfect seven weeks, a day ahead of where they should be.

The doctor promised me he would email me a picture, since the resolution is much better than the printed pictures. I thanked him and left, exhilarated. I called, texted, emailed, bulletin-boarded, Facebooked, and MySpaced everyone and their mother with the good news. Of course, I have received nothing but excited and happy encouragement, which I very much appreciate.

It wasn’t until a few hours after the reality began to sink in, that I realized I hadn’t seen a heartbeat. At seven weeks, I thought for sure the heartbeat would be prominent.

Just as he had promised, the doctor emailed me the ultrasound picture. I emailed him back, first thanking him for the picture, but also to ask if he remembered seeing the heartbeat because I was a tad worried about it. He wrote back that he did see a faint heartbeat on the one baby, but he didn’t really try to look at the other one. He told me that it wouldn’t really be prominent until next week.

So now, I sit here blogging, feeling crampy, but fairly certain that with two babies in my belly (like Bug predicted ) this is a normal thing. Thank you for letting me share my super fun news!