Mommy's Post: 13 weeks down...

Hi everyone... Molly's Mommy here. Today I had my 13-week pregnancy appointment, which means I'm 1/3 of the way done. It was a great appointment and I'm happy to report that everything is looking great. I'm healthy and the babies are healthy! I found it interesting that although I'm the same size now as I was around 25-weeks pregnant with Molly (see photo below), I've only gained 4 pounds. Go figure!


The cool thing about having twins is that I get more ultrasounds. It's totally neat to see the babies moving and kicking around in there. Here's the latest sonogram picture. Although it's not the best quality picture, you can catch the gist of what's going on in there. Baby A is on the right and you can see him/her in profile. The bump on the abdomen is its arm and its little legs are extended "mid-kick". Baby A was hopping all over the place, kicking its legs out from the fetal position. It was cracking me up! All you can see of Baby B in this picture is the top of its head (the oval blob in the top left quadrant), but we watched as Baby B waved its arms around like it was conducting a symphony. Perhaps this is an early insight into their different personalities? You can see in the picture the membrane between the two babies. It's good that they're not sharing a sac, because there's less worry of "entanglement issues" (e.g. cords wrapped around necks). But of course, only identical twins share a sac and we are 99.999% sure these guys aren't identical.

Seeing those little babies kicking and moving around in there finally calmed my heart about the whole "twin thing" and I found myself falling in love with those little babies! In fact, I listened to Christian praise music and cried on my way to pick up Molly knowing that there are two little miracles living and growing inside of me. What a privilege!

And finally, here's some interesting "twin facts" for you that I came across during my reading:

1. I will probably be around the same "girth" at 30 weeks pregnant with the twins as I was when I was full-term with Molly (yikes).

2. When you're carrying twins your blood volume doubles. That explains why they expect you to drink sixteen 8-ounce glasses of water each day. I found it interesting that one of the major causes of preterm labor with twins is dehydration!

3. They recommend that women carrying twins consume 3,500 calories a day. Studies have shown that mothers who gain 24 pounds by week 24 reduce their chances of giving birth either prematurely or to low birth-weight babies.

4. The average length of twin pregnancies is 36 weeks (as opposed to 40 weeks for singletons). That's only 23 weeks away for me... gulp...

5. The average weight of twins at term is about 5.5 lbs. So little!!!

6. And the final useless factoid... Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen are actually fraternal twins, not identical. If you don't know who those people are, don't worry about it because you're not missing out.