People are Funny -- 19 Weeks Pregnant
Twin pregnancy is funny. It’s just like a singleton pregnancy, but with double the babies. I guess that means, people aren’t quite sure how to react.
People are funny. As we are finding out, twins aren’t all that rare. They seem to be all around us, just now our eyes see it more clearly.
Before I continue, let me explain the different type of twins. Most of you are aware of fraternal and identical twins. Identical twins happen when one fertilized egg splits, developing into two babies with the same genetic information. It’s completely random and every woman has the same odds of producing identical twins. Fraternal twins happen when two eggs become fertilized by two sperm. Unlike identical twins, fraternal twins seem to be more genetic and is the most common type of twin.
I’m not going to go into much detail here, but it gets more complicated when you deal with identical twins. There actually are different types of identical twins (I definitely didn’t know this before my twin pregnancy). The specific type of twins we are carrying are called Monochorionic - Diamniotic (or mono-di for short). What that basically means is they each have their own amniotic sac, but share only one placenta. (Also, your chances of this is 0.3%.... yea, we’ve been told we should go out any buy a lottery ticket). Because of this, they are at a higher risk of twin to twin transfusion (TTTS) and one twin taking more nutrients from the placenta than the other.
As a result, identical twins are higher risk and come with more doctor appointments.
It’s not all scary and bad. It’s also exciting, mysterious, and miraculous.
And, a whole lot funnier once you spread the news to others….
Now, back to the non-educational part of my blog... People are funny. I get that finding out someone being pregnant with twins is less common than finding out someone is pregnant with a singleton. However, people’s reactions are very different.
To be honest, my reaction was one that I could do without my twins ever finding out about! I was shocked, in dis-belief, and not really allowing the truth of the news to sink in!
My reaction wasn’t all that funny, but a lot of other people’s reactions are…
Here are a couple of reactions I’ve gotten:
-Oh my gosh, I could never!
-Your life is going to be so hard
-What? Really? Did you do that hormone testing thing?
-I think I would die if that happened to me
-Oh wow, your poor body
-I do not know how you are going to manage. I hope you're never alone!
The most common reaction however is people asking if it runs in either of our families. This is why I started off my blog the way that I did. People usually don’t have knowledge on things that don’t affect them. So, most people don’t know that identical twins are not genetic. In this case, we just got lucky!
Although some people have some pretty funny reactions, and their words may not seem so encouraging at first. I know everyone means well and the surprise of their words just come from the shock of the news. I get that it’s not as common and people don’t really know how to react. (Heck, I wasn’t quite sure how to react, so I cant really expect others to know how to react either). At the end of the day, we feel blessed. I feel over whelmed sometimes at the thought of our reality, but people do it all of the time!!
By the way, I just wanted to share with you this great video of a woman (actually Jessi Cruickshank, who is also expecting Identical twins) getting advice from grandmas, its pretty great!
Enjoy!