I am not quite sure when I realized I wanted to have children. It was probably some time during junior high or the early high school years. I spent most of my free time babysitting, and there were several families in which I felt like I was practically raising their children as I saw them at least weekly and often daily. I do know that it was during this time that I realized I wanted a big family. From my observations, it truly seemed like "the more, the merrier" and I loved the happy chaos that went along with families that had three or more children. My favorite family had four children when I started babysitting and six children when all was said and done, and I always loved my time with them, hectic though it was.
Jeff always wanted a big family too, and for years the running joke was he wanted enough daughters to start his own soccer team. (That's 11 little estrogen-filled munchkins for those of you who don't follow the sport.) While we were eventually able to agree that perhaps eleven was a few children too many, we did know early on that we wanted to try to have to children and if all went well, we would have several.
No matter how much we had talked about children, we weren't quite prepared to go from thinking about maybe trying to get pregnant to finding out we were pregnant with R just a few weeks later. Nor were we fully prepared for instant pregnancy a second time. But nothing was quite as startling as our visit to the doctor last week.
Throughout my pregnacy with R, Jeff dutifully went to my prenatal checkups, excited to see for himself what was going on with the development of our first-born. This time around he is happy to stay at home with our crazy toddler and has resigned himself to a cheerful "been there, done that" mentality. However, we both decided that it made sense for him to come with me to my ultrasound last week. I wanted moral support and we thought it would be nice if he could be there to "see" his child for the first time and possibly learn the sex.
When we walked into the ultrasound room, Melissa introduced herself as our ultrasound technician (UT) and Jeff worked on getting R situated on the floor with her arsenal of activities. (In typical fashion, we had already been waiting for over 30 minutes, first in the main waiting room, then in a second waiting area, and R was already getting bored with this process.) Apparently once she got started with the ultrasound, Melissa was not one for stopping her work, and she consequently began smearing about a half gallon of goop on my belly to ensure that she would have enough for the entire ultrasound. As she smeared, we chatted. Our conversation went something like this.
UT: You're big for 20 weeks.
Me: Yeah, but it's my second pregnancy, I'm little, and I was measuring right for one baby at my last appointment, so no one seems to be concerned.
UT: Do you think it might be twins?
Me: We haven't ruled it out...
I smiled and realized that Melissa was ready to get on with business. She places the wand on my belly, then looks at the swirly blob on the screen. Melissa then freezes and holds up two fingers. I see some really crazy unfocused blobs on the screen and think she is holding up two fingers meaning to wait, like other (normal) people hold up one finger meaning "wait a minute." Apparently the thing was just not working.
Time passes and she is still holding up two fingers. I still see blobs. I start to wonder if she is giving me the peace sign.
More time passes and she is still standing there, holding up two fingers. I still see blobs and seem to remember my ultrasound with R being a whole lot clearer. I wonder if the two fingers is some code that I was supposed to have learned. I am awfully lazy about reading up on baby stuff.
I finally decide to break the silence.
Me: Two?
UT: Two.
Me: Two???
UT: Two.
Me: Two WHAT?
UT: Two babies.
Me: Huh?
UT: Twins.
Me: Ohhhh.
With a look of complete panic on her face, Melissa then says, "Hold on. I have to find out what to do." She then starts shuffling around and then bolts for the door. Right before she gets there, she turns around and tells me, "Usually they don't want me to do ultrasounds of twins. The docs don't handle twin cases. They pass them on to high-risk doctors." I then noted that if it made any difference as to whom she would consult, I wasn't a patient of the OBs in the practice. I was a patient of the midwives in the practice. Her look of terror went up a couple of notches and she silently high-tailed it out of the room.
As the door slammed shut behind her, that left me and Jeff staring at each other each realizing that we were suddenly leaping from our nice, sensible family with one child into the crazy world of "big" families. And R just kept on coloring.
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