Just when you think you’re done, oops, it’s TWINS!

So my husband, Randy, and I were just living the high life. We had two healthy beautiful little girls who just turned two and four. We just bought a mac-daddy house (in our opinion – may not be all that macked out in your world!) And we thought we could live in this big ‘ole house and stretch ourselves out. So a week before closing on the house, something triggered me to take a pregnancy test.

Maybe the fact that I hadn’t had my period in over six weeks was a good clue. But we weren’t “trying” to get pregnant. In fact, Randy was done, D.O.N.E. Done. He was so over the baby phase and life was just getting good with the girls. Did I mention that they are exactly two years apart? This will come into play later.

So, I take the pregnancy test and within seconds, two lines appear. I was freaking out. I think I called my sister from my bathroom while Randy was watching football or golf or some guy thing. Then I called Jen (fellow blogger) and I just really didn’t think I could tell Randy. I knew he would flip.

So I finally had to tell him because I was a wreck and he just sat down and shook his head. Now let me clarify that he was not angry with me, just mad at how “irresponsible” we were – takes two to tango buddy so I didn’t let him milk that for very long. Just gave him a little space. We had the discussion and that was it. No more chitchatting about that life-changing conversation.

So a week later, my viability ultrasound comes up. Thank you, to my AWESOME OB-GYN, Dr. Alyse Kelly-Jones, for really believing in early ultrasounds. If this happened at my 18-week ultrasound, I don’t know what I would have done! I specifically didn’t tell Randy about this ultrasound – I mean he’s been there, done that. This is just the butterbean photo. I didn’t even mark my calendar.

So I go to the Dr. office and I’m sitting in the waiting room, reading Parents Magazine. And a few minutes later, in strolls Randy. Ahh – such a relief that he is actually acknowledging that we’re having baby #3. So maybe a minute later, just as my eyes land on a twins article, the nurse calls out my name. At that moment, I knew this was going to be not one baby, but two. I just knew it. To this day, Randy does not believe me on this one. But you can ask my sister, Kathy, and Jen (fellow blogger). I said from the get go – “you watch this will be twins”. I think I just felt differently, or maybe we can chalk it up to mother’s intuition or just plain paranoia.

So Randy and I go in with the ultrasound technician and I tell her to make sure she sees just one heartbeat. She quickly replied “everyone who says that ends up having twins!” So we go through the whole thing – we saw that everything was measuring beautifully, the baby looked healthy and all the great things you look for in an early ultrasound. So the ultrasound technician was just about finished, and she just got silent. She actually looked very scared. Randy asked her what she was looking at and she replied – “I’m just checking on something – yes, yes, this is what I thought. It’s twins!”

And I tell you, I about fell off that table. I immediately started crying. I told the technician, “these are not happy tears!” And I think at that moment, I knew I could not do this alone as a stay-at-home mom. I was going to need some serious help. And that’s just what I did. I found a full-time nanny and ended up hiring a night nurse when the twins were two weeks old because they were born during the height of flu season in 2006. My “staff” of extended family dropped like flies and could not help me in the least bit. In fact, I turned them all away and hired that night nurse instead.

Stay tuned for more on the night nurse and full-time nanny in the coming weeks.