One Year Ago

I took the whole day off of work so Ed and I could have a day date before my sonogram.  I’d been feeling so crappy but my Unisom/B6 combo was starting to help a little bit, so I was excited to have some time with Ed.  We dropped the kids at camp had breakfast at our favorite coffee shop and went to the mall to see a movie.  Ed grumbled because I’d insisted on taking the first appointment that the imaging place had available, so we wouldn’t have time to get lunch after the movie.  It was just a dating sonogram after all, nothing different than before.

I’d joked with Ed in the days leading up to the appointment that surely I was having twins because my symptoms were so extreme.  In the back of my mind, I knew something was different–maybe it was that I was older, or heavier or some unknown factor but I just KNEW. We joked about it here in fact, and on Twitter.  Twins!  Hahahahahaa!

Ha.

As long as I live I will never forget lying on the table, and watching the tech start her scan.  She’d left Ed in the waiting room to get some initial measurements before bringing him back for the fun. I was no stranger to any of this, of course.  She felt my belly and determined that my uterus felt big enough that she should be able to see the baby without an internal sonogram. She angled me away from the table so that I had to strain my head to see.  And hooo boy, I saw.  Two distinct areas where I knew from experience there should only be one.  My heart started racing. She did some things quickly–I would assume that she checked for 2 heartbeats, and abruptly turned the monitor off, announcing that she was going to go and get my husband and leaving me alone in the dimly lit room.

The very second that she came back and shut the door behind Ed, she leaned against it casually and said “soooo…you guys are having twins!”. Ed was sure that I had put her up to it; that it was a joke. I…well, I burst in to tears.  I may have exclaimed “shit!” over and over again. I am surprised that I didn’t have a heart attack.  She let me pee, finished the ultrasound and handed us a stack of pictures labeled “A” and “B” on the way out.

Shock was an understatement in describing how I felt.  We left the appointment and went shopping.  A beaming Ed told everyone there that we were having twins.  We went to Mighty Taco.  A beaming Ed told everyone there that we were having twins. I came home and posted this.  We picked the kids up from camp. A beaming Ed told everyone there that we were having twins. We went to his Rotary picnic.  Again, a beaming Ed told everyone there that we were having twins. Through all of this I was numb.  I was a deer in headlights.  I hissed at Ed to just Shut! Up! more than once. I excused myself from the party several times to tweet frantically.  I am reasonably sure that I did not blink for at least 24 hours. I wanted to take to my bed and just process it all.

It wasn’t long before I came to terms with it, obviously. I mean, it’s still shocking on some level.  I still have days, 5.5 months after their birth, where I can’t believe that there are 2 of them.  I will make mention of “the twins” and immediately think “Holy SHIT we have twins!”.

BUT! For all the fear of the unknown and wondering exactly how we were going to do this whole two infants thing, I don’t think I would change any of it.  They are supposed to be here.  It’s kind of like they’ve always been here.

One year ago we found out that we were having twins. Today, those twins are five months old and are an absolute delight to everyone they meet. One year from now they will be 17 months old and walking, talking tiny people.

One year since our lives changed forever and I would never ever go back.  We thought we were one kid short of our complete family, and it turns out that we were actually missing two.

We’re all here now.