Twin Tuesday: Twin Basics/FAQ and 8 Week Ultrasound Pics

We've had a lot of questions since finding out that we are having twins... we've also been doing lots of research (surprise, surprise) on our own as well. We've also had lots of people offer support, encouragement, and advice - thank you!!

A sweet wreath made by encouraging friends :-)

I want to start capturing the twins' pregnancy similar to how I did Madi's, but with a few changes. Developmentally, twins are 3-4 weeks ahead of a singleton pregnancy. So basically the weekly updates I did with Madi aren't accurate for our new babies development. I found on Baby Center an update on development every four weeks so I'll do bump picture posts then with how they are growing.

Additionally, if there's other news or things to share I'll do them in this type of post - Twin Tuesday, so they are still getting a bit more spotlight. ;-)



So for the first edition, here's some questions we've gotten and information we've learned since that Tuesday three weeks ago now...

1. Are there twins in your family? Only fraternal twins are hereditary and only on the mother's side (since the father has no bearing on how many eggs you might release in a cycle). There are no twins, fraternal or identical, at least the past four generations that we are aware of.

2. Were you taking fertility drugs? For pity's sake, it was our first month trying! No, we were not taking any sort of supplements to increase the chances of pregnancy. These twins are au natural. :-)

3. Are they fraternal or identical? Identical twins means the egg splits into two parts. Fraternal means that two eggs were released in a cycle and both were fertilized. Currently, there is no definitive way to tell if they are fraternal or identical. We hypothesize that they are fraternal based on the fact that they each have their own placenta and are measuring the same size (but if the egg had split early enough with identical twins they could also have their own placenta so again, it's not a definitive way to tell.)

If they are different genders, then they are obviously fraternal. If they are the same gender, then you could look at blood type to see if they are identical. Since Jason and I are both O-, both of the twins will be O- so that doesn't help. The only way we'd be able to tell if they were identical if they are the same gender is if we did a DNA test to see if their DNA was identical.

4. Are you going to find out gender? Yes, we are most definitely going to find out the gender! And we will share it on the blog after we tell family. :-)

5. When is your due date? My due date was July 25th, but I was measuring about a week ahead when I went into the ultrasound. However, in Norway they will induce twins at 38 weeks and the probability of them being born sooner than that is pretty high (on average twins are born around 36 weeks). I have a sneaking suspicion they will be born in June overshadowing Madi's June 20th birthday...


We go back for another appointment on Jan 12th and the doctor has scheduled an hour for Jason and I to do another ultrasound, more measurements, and hopefully answer the page-long list of questions we've compiled for her. ;-)

Until then, here's the ultrasound pictures we got when I went in at 8 weeks to hear the heartbeat and got quite the surprise! On the left is Baby A and on the right is Baby B.

And here's both babies together!