How We Got Our Twins

My mother has psychic dreams.  She tends to know when people are about to die.  She's had dreams about other things as well.  When I was about 15 she had a dream that I had twins.  She explained it in such detail it made an impression on me.  When I got pregnant the first time, I thought it may be twins.  Imagine my relief  when there was just one embryo on that first ultrasound. 

Fast forward a bit.  I tried for a long time to get pregnant the second time.  Okay, maybe it wasn't that long, but it felt long, especially when you are timing the pregnancy in relation to your first born.  We started passively trying shortly before her 1st birthday.  I got pregnant a few months later, but sadly lost the baby.  I was anxious to get started again, but my cycles never quite returned to normal.  All this time, my oldest is quickly growing.  I wanted my kids to be relatively close together.  Each cycle that went by, my closely spaced kids were getting further and further apart.  

I started charting, and it was blatantly obvious that I was not ovulating. After doing that for 6 months, I talked to my OB and she decided to put me on Clomid.  We had a trip planned to visit relatives in California around that time.  There was some blood work involved, and I had to find a place to do it.  I somehow ended up in the worst healthcare facility I have ever seen.  It took them weeks to get my lab results back and slowed our progress because so much depended on the questions those results were answering.  
I did 3 cycles of Clomid with no luck.  I still wasn't ovulating, so they referred me to a reproductive endocrinologist.  He was able to act quickly because I had such great charts.  We tried a different drug, Letrozole, which is supposed to have less chance of producing multiples than Clomid.  I got pregnant the second cycle.   

The day I found out I was pregnant, I saw a double rainbow.  In my mind, I knew that it was a sign that I was carrying twins.  It was as though God showed me his promise  of two babies, not only the baby we wanted, but also the one he had previously taken.  I had my HCG levels checked a few short days later.  They were okay, but not spectacular.  

Then we went back to California again.  They wanted me to do a follow up blood test a few days later. I was much more careful in choosing a lab provider this time.  It was strange how the fertility journey was book ended by lab work done in another state.  They did get my HCG levels back to my doctor the very next day.  The call from my doctor was cautiously optimistic.  My HCG levels had not quite doubled.  They were slightly concerned and warned me not to get my hopes up, this could put me at a greater risk for a miscarriage.  And here we had just told all of my husband's family the news.  We may have waited, but since we were there in person, we couldn't hold it in.  That, and the second I turned down a margarita they would have suspected anyway.  

Then on August 26, 2008, just after we arrived back in New York, my suspicions were confirmed.  My first ultrasound clearly showed 2 little heart beats, thumping away.  You could see them the second that the ultrasound tech put the wand on me.  She saw my jaw drop, and asked "Do you see what I see?"

I said "I think I see two!" 

My husband said "Two what?" 

My mother saw me get out of the car with the ultrasound picture in hand.  She could see the 2 sacs on that picture all the way from the picture window, and so she ran out to see.  Then she said it would be one of each.  Of course, she was right.