The Discovery

Holy Shit. That was the first thing out of my mouth when I found out there were two little babies growing inside me.

Just to set the scene and for some comic relief –

I was 29, in a new job that I absolutely loved as an infusion nurse. I was living with and dating my best friend and love of my life. You can tell we are in a good place now by how fondly I am speaking of him. We wanted to start a family and boy oh boy, did we ever.

We had an amazing summer of hiking, trips, and friends. On one of those hot summer nights, we enjoyed a couple of glasses of wine, had lots of fun talking about making a baby, and some naked time under the sheets.

Proceed to a month in the future and there we are in the bathroom, waiting for the timer to go off so we can look at the small rectangular window on the pregnancy test and see if we were lucky enough to have a plus sign. We could not believe our eyes when we got a positive result. We held each other in the bathroom, unable to fully grasp the reality of being pregnant.

Our first ultrasound was at about 5 weeks. It showed 1, yes 1 baby. Since this particular doctor did not feel it was time, we did not get an ultrasound picture to take home of our little dot. We sat in the car outside the doctor’s office. Both Jack and I fully understood the percentage of miscarriage this early and felt an equal mix of excitement and terror. We actually high fived each other and said, “Thank goodness it isn’t twins, we would have been screwed.” A little backstory might be helpful here. One of my best friends from childhood had twins earlier that year, so the thought of twins was very fresh in our minds.

The following week at work I mentioned that we did not get an ultrasound picture. Since I work next to the ObGyn clinic I was able to get an ultrasound scheduled that day so I could bring home a photo to show Jack. Six of my co-workers (all women) came with me to the appointment. Everyone was so excited to see our little one and as anyone who knows me knows, I am a very open person so I was happy to be surrounded by women who cared for me.

So here I am, with my co-workers around me (at the head and sides of the table) and I am laying on the exam table with the vaginal ultrasound feeling its way around and I see happy tears in their eyes. I will always remember looking up at Barb and seeing a huge smile on her face, tears running down her cheeks while she gently clapped and bounced up and down.

The Physician looks at me and says, “Annie, there are two.”