Mad About Multiples!

Why I Believe in Miracles

August is a strange time for me.  This is the month that I celebrate the life of my beautiful daughter, who just turned five.  I also mourn the loss of her twin, Peyton, who died at birth.  From outward appearances, my involvement in Gemini Crickets stems from my being the mom of my crazy three-and-a-half year old twin boys.  But, I was a twin mom even before that when I got pregnant with my identical twin girls.

Mine is a somewhat confusing tale to outsiders.  They ask if my twin boys were born premature and I shake my head as I remember the birth of the boys, one who weighed just over seven pounds; the other, just under seven pounds.  The doctor and nurses exclaimed as they pulled the boys out, “Wow, those are BIG twins!”  If I happen to mention that my daughter was 13 weeks premature, inevitably the next question is, “Do they know why?”  The answer to this is unfortunately somewhat complicated and too tragic for public consumption so I usually respond with something vague.

The situation is that Nicole and Peyton were in a precarious physiological state when they were in my womb.  Being identical twins, they shared a placenta and were at risk for a condition called “twin-to-twin-transfusion-syndrome” or TTTS.  Single babies actually reside in two sacs.  The outer sac is the amniotic sac; the inner is the chorionic sac.  When twins share a chorionic sac, they also share a placenta and there is a danger that their blood supplies can become connected.  This results in one twin literally giving the other a transfusion.  As a result, one twin gets too much blood/nutrients (the recipient); the other not enough (the donor).   This places a lot of strain on both babies and the mortality rate is 60-100%.  Strangely, it is often the recipient who has the harder time due to the stress of all the extra fluids on the baby’s organs, but this wasn't the case with us.  Nicole was the recipient and Peyton was the donor.

“You’ve got two in there!” “What?”

My husband and I had the surprise of a lifetime at 19 weeks pregnant: an ultrasound discovered another baby-we were having twins! Our famliy members thought we were joking because, really, not finding out until almost 5 months along? Yep, that was us! We actually paid out of pocket and went to a sonographer and he’s the one you hear in the video. I wasn’t even scheduled to have my level two until 21 weeks with the doctor so it could have been even several more weeks before we found out.  We were getting anxious about wanting to know the sex and see the baby. We hadn’t seen anything since the 8 week ultrasound and all of us, including the PA who performed the ultrasound, only saw one.  Funny, deep down, I knew.  At our first ultarasound, I specifically remember asking, “you only see one?” I just couldn’t shake the feeling that I was having twins. Mother’s intuition I guess!

We gave birth to our identical boys (had the placenta tested) on December 2^nd, and it’s been an amazing roller coaster ride ever since. They are growing so fast! We watch our ultrasound video all the time and to this day, I still can’t believe it when I relive that moment! Original post to Mad About Multiples.

Mirror Image Identical Twins (swimming video)

Tom and Nick are athletic 6.5-year-old boys who are mirror image identical twins. Their mom, a Gemini Crickets POM club member, tells Mad About Multiples that she discovered she was having twins - identical twins! - at her 12 week ultrasound. (The first ultrasound had shown only one heartbeat.) As her twins were monozygotic, she had follow up ultrasounds every four weeks to check for twin-to-twin-transfusion syndrome (TTTS). Her twins were very similar in size until around the last month when one appeared to be a bit larger than the other. When the twins were born at 36.9 weeks gestation, they shared a combined weight of 14 pounds and a slight case of TTTS.

Some fun facts about these mirror image twins:

Tom is a lefty; Nick is a righty.

Tom lost his front left tooth first; Nick lost his front right tooth first.

Tom's hair whorls to the right while Nick's hair whorls to the...you guessed it, left.

Tom favorite activities include sports and super hero play. Nick is into puzzles, Legos and tangrams.

Their mom had to laugh when she watched this video of her twins swimming in mirror image synchronicity.

We heart these mirror image twins! Go, boys, go!