People are always surprised when I tell them that D and I knew that we were having twins before we had our first ultrasound. Truth be told, I was completely convinced there were two little babas from around 10 weeks into the pregnancy but a few days before the scan I decided that I was being paranoid due to hormones.
After all, these are my first babies. I have nothing to compare the pregnancy to, and all pregnancies are different anyway. While searching the internet for symptoms of a twin pregnancy I came across countless women who were just as sure as I was that they were having twins, only to find out there was just one baby at their 12 week scan. Clearly, convincing yourself there are twins when there aren't is a pretty common occurrence.
So, I shrugged it off as best as I could, though there was still that nagging feeling in the back of mind.
There were two main reasons for knowing I was carrying twins before I found out at the scan. The first was the immense and debilitating morning sickness. I felt nauseous from the moment I woke up in the morning to the second I went to sleep at night and I couldn't move without throwing up. The nausea started at 5 weeks and the vomiting at 7 weeks, and didn't start to ease up until 16 weeks. I still struggle with morning sickness now, though thankfully I throw up rarely thanks to the help of some medication.
D told me daily that he had never known anyone to have morning sickness like I did, but when I brought it up with my midwife at my booking appointment she wasn't too fussed as I hadn't been admitted to hospital with dehydration. Which is fair enough, after all there isn't a great deal that can be done. For D, this was the big giveaway that it was twins. She did however joke that maybe there was more than one baby making me feel so ill!
The other clue was the size of my bump. At 9 weeks I could no longer button up my jeans and bought a bump band. At 11 weeks I was forced to buy maternity clothes. At first D and I wondered if I was simply noticing the bump earlier because I have a naturally small and flat waist, though a quick look online seemed to point out that those with strong and small stomachs generally seem to show later on in the pregnancy rather than earlier.
The extreme sickness and the bigger than average bump were what started me down the twin track, but there was something more than that too. Put simply, a gut feeling. I've always been very in tune with my body, and I simply got it in my head that I was having twins and that was that. Perhaps that's why I started wondering if I was being paranoid and hormonal just days before the scan.
Looking back, there were other signs too. All my pregnancy symptoms came on quickly and strongly, which I initially put down to just being over sensitive to the hormones but I now know to be due to having double the amount of hormones coursing through my body. I also got a very early positive pregnancy test, days before my period was due, after having a weekend of nausea and what I thought was a stomach bug but what turned out to be early pregnancy symptoms.
So, when we got the news that there were two babies I wasn't shocked or surprised, though there is still a part of me even now which can hardly believe that this is really happening. However, it is very much true, and in a few months I'll be meeting my babies. I can hardly wait.
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