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discovery at 29 weeks, twins have separate birthda

I got pregnant when my 4th baby was only 6 months old. I felt crummy right away. My back hurt much sooner and I couldn't eat much because I was always stuffed. I had planned to have a home birth and was going to midwives, avoiding an ultrasound due to the costs.

When I was about 4 months along, a friend called to tell me she had a dream that I was having twins. I went the the midwives soon after and told them, so they checked for an extra heartbeat but didn't hear one. I was measuring normally.

The next month I was talking to my 2 1/2 year old about my tummy. I said that I had a baby in my tummy. Did she have a baby in her tummy? No, she said, she had TWO babies in her tummy. She had never even heard of twins before, as far as I knew. Weird!

Again, my midwives didn't hear a 2nd heart beat, and I was measuring normally. When I went in for my 28 week checkup, I was very uncomfortable and feeling large, although I had only gained about 15 lbs. My measurement had gone up 8 in the last 4 weeks instead of only 4 (meaning that my uterus got really large all of the sudden). So we scheduled an ultrasound for the next week.

I was excited, because I thought my due date must be off by a month. Nowhere in our families had anyone had twins. At the ultrasound, I asked the tech what the two round things were on the TV screen. She said, "two heads." At which point my husband asked if there were two bodies, and I burst into tears thinking that I was having conjoined twins.

I ended up delivering at 38 1/2 weeks withOUT an epidural and actually walked to the OR while I was about to have the babies. It was close to midnight. I told my midwife that I wanted both babies to be born on the same day. I'm sure she rolled her eyes.

Ava was born at 11:55 PM, and Therese was born at 12:06 AM, making them 11 minutes apart and having separate birthdays. They were 6 lbs and 5 lbs 14 oz. We found out after we got the placenta report that they are identical (they didn't look alike for a long time due to their head shapes).

Overall, I gained 25 lbs and was able to start working out at 5 weeks postpartum. I lost all of my weight in 10 week by lifting weights 3 days a week, aerobics 3 days a week and watching my calorie intake. I nursed them for 5 weeks total. Considering that I then had 4 children in diapers and 6 kids total, I was pretty pleased with that.

The girls are now 5 and are in the same Kindergarten class. They don't switch identities at school, but began trying it at home when they were about 2. Lots of work, having twins, but the glory is great too!

mary-claire

TWINS

I am 33 years old and expecting twins. We were so shocked because we thought we were done. I got pregnant on the pill and with 2 we have had a hard time believing it. I have 2 boys ages 7 & 9 and my 9 year old is ecstatic but my 7 year old does not say much about it. I am 9 weeks and already feel so heavy in my stomach and I never remember feeling this way before. If anyone has any advise or good pointers please let me know.

Shawna

Trips and Twins

When I was 25 and dating a great guy with plans to marry him, I got pregnant. My sortof fiance, James, and I were shocked, but we both had planned on having children in the next few years anyways. Everybody else was delighted. I was he only person in my family, and I mean my entire family, even my million cousins, to not have any children by 25. Except my sister, and she was pregnant with twins and 4 days overdue, and she had her babies the next day. My mother had even bought me a pregnancy test for my 25th birthday saying "you're a quater of a century old, how much longer are you going to keep me waiting". But this was real, I was pregnant and in a pretty stable place in my life, I could be ready to settle down. James and I officially announced our engagement, even though everbody knew, I had been wearing my ring for 2 years already. We found out that I was already 5 months along, shock, and we were happy to be out of the misscarriage times. When I was 6 months pregnant we found out that we were having not twins, but triplets! All three babies were girls. When I delivered at 36 weeks and 6 days all of the babies were over 5 pounds. I delivered vaginally. We named them Chloe Agnes, Clara Blenda, and Chaia Channah. They kept us busy and I could have lived without any more children but my husband really wanted a son and after time I decided that there was actually one empty room left, as the trips took up 3, and there was another seat in the car, we have a van, and we had the money. We I made it clear to my husband that we would try once more for a baby and whether we got a boy or a girl that was it. No more. We agreed. I did alot of research and finally we decided to go through ivf and try and choose the gender that way. We got a double dose of what we wanted, the egg split and we got twins, Asher James and Felix James. We are DONE now! I am not having any more children, and my husband cannot possibly want anymore children, our house is organized chaos but I wouldn't trade it for the world!

Jayne

Once in a lifetime?

I never thought it was going to happen to my family. I was married for 2 years and we were trying to create the perfect family. Neither my DH or myself are twins and twins don't run in our families. We were even considering having an only child that we could spoil. But after TTC for 3 months we found out we were pregnant. We went to see the fetal heartbeat and found out that we were having identical twins, TWICE! We had four babies growing inside! Quads, but with 2 sets of identical twins! Identical twins are NEVER hereditary, so there was no way of knowing this could happen to us. The chances of concieving 'natural' quads that are made up of two sets of identical twins is thought to be as high as 1 in 25-36 million. Well, don't we wish we'd played the lottory! We were not ready for the news at all. First off, multiple pregnancies are rare and often very high risk. One set of our twins were dichorionic twins and one were monochronic twins, which means the second set shared a placenta, a dangerous situation for a growing fetus. At any point if any of the fetuses died, it risked the life of the others and of myself. Luckily I carried them to 38 weeks, and they were all born healthy, but small. We had 2 girls and 2 boys. We named them Larry, Barry, Carry and Mary. Might as well have a sense of humor about it, fate sure did! Well I guess the stress was getting to my DH Jerry- because after they quads were 5 months old I found our he'd been having an affair and the other woman was pregnant. It was a one time deal, and the other woman apologized to me and said it was a big mistake. She found out she was having identical twins. I couldn't believe it. She was single and decided to give her twins to us to raise as my own. My DH wasn't sure if we could afford it, or if he was ready- but he knew to keep his mouth shut at this point and let me make the decisions, so I said yes and now we have 6 children, 3 sets of identical twins. My last two were girls, Gerry and Perry so 4 girls total and 2 boys. They are all very close in age but I wouldn't have it any other way. My DH is very active with the children and after he gets home from 12 hour days at the firm he still finds time to help bathe and play games with the kids and rub my feet, I guess I deserve it because I just found out I am pregnant AGAIN, and we are still waiting to find out if it is a singleton, which we are praying for! Luckily we have had a lot of financial help from neighbors and the community, who do not know that the twins were not mine biologically, obviously people close to me know, but there is no reason for the children to think they are any different blessings than the others at this atage in their lives. To all of you raising multiples, it is a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Annie, DH Jerry, DS Larry, DS Barry, DD Carry and DD Mary, DD Perry, DD Gerry

Babylotto

For Kara Elizabeth Genner

3 days before my high school graduation I found out I was pregnant. I had been with Matt for 4 years. I told him and he was okay, he said he loved me and would help me whatever path we took. We graduated and my kindof extravagant parents bought us a 4 bed house to have forever. Matts parents bought us a car. We went to university and we had been there about a week when I started to bleed. I misscarried and we were sad but relieved. We got engaged when the graduated university and got married the next summer. We both got jobs and payed off our student tuition then payed off the car and house and got a retirement fund set up. Matt set up a college fund for future children. When we were financially ready we started not preventing pregnancy. 3 months later I was definetly pregnant. 8 weeks along. Then 12. Then I got scared. Last time we had lost the baby at 4 months. But this time 4 and 5 months passed. I started to show and we spilled the beans on my bump and the families went crazy over me. We set up a nursery and bought everything we would need and then we started looking for names. We narrowed it down to 4. I went over due, 3 weeks overdue, and finally, after 40 hours of labor, I made us parents. Katherine Kara Elizabeth Genner was 8 pounds and 20 inches of very vocal human. We were going to name our misscarried baby Kara Elizabeth Genner and to honor her we used that in Kates name. We took Kate home and I stayed home with her while Matt worked. Kate was 8 months old when we found out we were pregnant again. We were planning it anyways so we were very happy. When Kate was 15 months old we had another baby girl. Charlotte Ciel Ivanna Genner was beautiful and healthy. Kate was fascinated when we brought Cici home. It was adorable. We really liked the age difference between Kate and Cici so we did it again. This time Cici was 15 months and Kate was 2 1/2 when I had another baby girl. Evangeline Esme Karina Genner. This time it was Cici who was amazed and Kate had been there before so she was pretty chilled our. We wanted a big family and we really loved the age difference so when Eva was 15 months, Cici was 2 1/2, and Kate was 3 1/2 we had Isabelle Inez Chantal Genner. That brought us to a grand total of 4 girls, 0 boys. We decided to try 1 last time and we ended up with twins. Boys. Anthony Ames Grayer Genner and Mitchell Matthew Grayson Genner. That brought us to 6, and I am done. Kate is 5 now and in kindergarten, Cici is 4 and in junior kindergarten, Eva is 3 and in preschool, Izzy is 2 and stays home with me and her 1 year old brothers, Tony and Mitch. I am 31 now and I have 6 kids, a beautiful house with a room for each kid, a car with 6 car seats of some sort, and a husband who is somewhat responsible for the six kids. I hope all you young mothers out there don't give up. You are stronger than me, I wouldn't have my degree and I probably would only have the one child if it had survived. Stay strong, Amelia, Matthew, Katherine, Charlotte, Evangeline, Isabelle, Anthony, and Mitchell.

Amelia Genner