Saturday, April 2, 2011

Ultrasound, March 10, 2011



I could tell that something was different in the ultrasound room. On the screen I saw my baby for a moment, a rib cage, a snub nose in profile, then the image suddenly dissolved, and then reappeared again, only… upside down? I didn’t remember that trick from Devon’s 20 week sonogram, which wasn’t all that long ago (November 2010). Then the sonogram tech started rapidly swirling the camera around on my stomach in a figure eight-like motion and I thought of Mr. Potato Head when you open the door in his back and see all his spare parts tangled up inside. A knee and an ear? A foot and two hands? Three feet and a chin? Was there something wrong with my baby? Could it be fixed? What would they do with all the extra body parts… donate them?

“So… what number scan is this for you?” asked the tech.

“The first.” I thought I was two months late when I finally saw a dark blue cross on the end of the stick, but it was hard to tell. The monthly visitor had barely started visiting me again anyway because I was still nursing Devon, then 9 months. Since it was Christmas week, I had to wait until the doctor’s offices opened again to make an appointment, and they couldn’t see me until late January. When they said they could get me in for an ultrasound at 16 weeks, I declined. Since my husband is just finishing grad school, we have Humana Student Health insurance (Need health care? Flip a coin. Heads we’ll cover it. Tails we won’t!).

The kaleidoscope of baby shapes continued to move on the screen and then came to rest for a moment. “Well, I have a surprise for you. There’s more than one in there!”

I gasped and looked over at my husband, who was holding almost one-year-old Devon tightly and grinning like we had just won the fertility lottery. “I knew it!” I wheezed. But did I really? What I had was more a vague sense that this pregnancy was different, and they say that every one is. I had several dreams of Devon and he was always a boy, so I’d been going to bed every night waiting for gender clues in my dreams. So far, I dreamed of food: burritos, cheeseburgers, cake, terryaki chicken bowl. I was definitely sicker with this pregnancy, and I had already stopped riding the stationary bike because of a tight abdominal sensation I was experiencing, reminiscent of two stakes being wedged between my rib cage and my pelvis, one on each side.



As it turns out, the stakes are identical twin girls. Twin A is currently breech and seems to be the more active one, using my bladder as a stairmaster in the evenings.



Twin B is currently head down, and seems quieter. I can occasionally feel her fingering my intestines like the strings of a harp.



I triumphantly told the ultrasound tech that this was why I was big for 20 weeks, and her response was that my due date was also off. Measuring at 16 weeks and 17 weeks, my twins are due August 21st, not July 28th as we thought. So Devon will probably still be a big brother by 16 months, because twins are often early. And being moved back four weeks in my pregnancy didn’t help any size estimates either. I’m kind of like global warming: it’s a vague problem that everyone seems worried about, but we all have no idea how bad it’s going to be.



So, Devon turned one last week, and Craig finishes grad school in August of this year, and whatever job we find will probably include moving again. I’d spent weeks picturing us driving off in our car with one newborn, one toddler, and one tabby in the back seat of our compact car. At the moment, we’re not sure how we can accommodate three babies under two and a tabby cat in our compact Chevy Malibu, but it’s not a bad problem to have.

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