Thank you all so, so much for the incredible outpouring of love, support, and joy on our twins announcement. I am overwhelmed. I read every single comment, cried a whole lot, and saved them all for the days I know are coming when I need a dose of happiness. Your words are and will be God's grace to me.
I thought I might tell a little more of the story, starting with a bit of preface.
Anyone who knows us knows that we have been back and forth and back and forth on whether or not to grow our family. I can say that I had mostly come to a place of being totally at peace with having our two girls and that's it. I'm the oldest of four so the idea of a family of four was kind of a novelty for me. I love our girls so, so much and they are so wildly different that it never mattered a bit to me that they were the same gender.
I do have to confess, though, that spending the better part of a year thinking and writing about infancy triggered some mad baby fever in me. I mean, I love babies anyway. LOVE THEM. I am one of that rare breed that absolutely adores the newborn stage and gosh, infancy with all the gummy smiles and incredible snuggles and everything-is-new ... I can't get enough.
Whenever I would make a comment about feeling like we were done with the baby stage, though, Kyle would feel kind of sad. He never had that feeling of our family being complete.
And so as my 35th birthday approached, we talked about the fact that neither of us were getting younger and if we were going to add a person to our family, we better get serious about it. As a long-time practitioner of the Fertility Awareness Method of family planning, I know exactly when my fertile days are each cycle. This "oh, what the heck? Let's give it a shot!" try was a Hail Mary pass, a long-shot, a maybe-but-probably-not as I was at the very end of fertility that month.
And so.
This time, unlike with Dacey or AJ, I knew long before it was confirmed. I had some mild nausea almost from conception (not kidding) and I just really knew I was pregnant, no matter how much of a long-shot our attempt had been. I took one pregnancy test that was negative that made me question my belief, but not long after that I got a positive that confirmed what I had been knowing.
And then, y'all. The sick set in.
I was not sick at all with Dacey and had some uncomfortable nausea with AJ in the evenings for a few weeks, but I had never experienced anything like this. All day, wretched, life-consuming nausea sprinkled with random vomiting. (Throwing up in the bathroom of the grocery store was a particularly low moment for me.)
Everyone assured me that the intense sickness MUST mean I'm having a boy this time! And I believed that. I wanted to believe it. I want to believe it. But nowhere in any part of my mind did I ever think we were having twins.
For his part, Kyle teased me from the very moment I got a positive pregnancy test that it was twins this time. He swears he didn't really think we were, just that it got such an amazingly vehement reaction out of me that he couldn't help but to tease me more.
Here's an example:
There is none - ZERO - history of twins on my side of the family. None, none, none. Kyle has some distant relatives that were twins, but my understanding is that it runs through the mother's side of the family (?).
Anyway.
When I got my positive test, I started thinking about finding an OB. That started me down a path where I thought I knew where I was headed. I thought this was going to be it - that this time, all the stars had aligned and circumstances were right and I was going to get to try for a VBA2C.
On a whim, I had reached out to the OU Midwives, known throughout the state for their incredible care of and advocacy for women. One of them encouraged me to pursue a VBA2C with her, but suggested I meet with one of the OBs at OU Physicians first to talk through the risks and statistics so that I could make the best decision possible for me.
So that's how it came to be that I found myself in Dr. Gibson's office on Tuesday afternoon.
And that's when everything changed.
(more to the story later today tomorrow! Sorry. It will have to be tomorrow ....)
