7 Weeks... it's TWINS!

Yesterday we discovered at our first ultrasound that there are in fact TWO babies on the way!

On the trip  home from the scan Matt and I started discussing the logistics of not being able to fit three child/baby seats across the back of our car and what that would most likely mean for our family (I don't like driving huge cars/4WDs), double prams, and will we ever get any sleep again after the babies are born?!

However, it's all so far away (and yet.... it isn't!) and as we're both thinkers (as opposed to do-ers) it's time to start talking about it. Then there's the fun part of coming up with extra baby names (squee!) and deciding such things as finding out the sex of the babies before they're born. We were leaning towards waiting until birth to find out had there been one baby, but now that there's two we'll probably find out for practicality reasons. Not that I'm displeased with that, unconsciously I think I probably wanted to know anyway.

Three children when both Matt and I saw our family with two? If this all works out, we are definitely done now!!

So here is what we know so far:

• The babies are identical
• Our single embryo split into two before it implanted into my uterus (basically a 48-hour window between the embryo being thawed and implantation beginning)
• Each baby has their own amniotic sac (a VERY good thing, I'm so relieved!)
• The babies share a placenta (so there is a potential risk of twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome developing, worst case scenario)
• My due date is still in early March, but it's likely that they could come in Jan/Feb, depending on how everything goes (scary...)
• I'll be monitored more closely because of the twin pregnancy, mostly through ultrasounds (which could be as often as every 2-3 weeks)
• This will make one heck of a pregnancy scrapbook!

When it was all sinking in yesterday (put it this way, Matt's initial responses to the ultrasound technician telling us that the embryo had split and there were two babies was a loud "OH SHIT!", and I could barely say a word except for muttering "TWO! ..... TWO! ..... TWO!"), my best friend gave me a good laugh. She said that the weakest of our embryos (as I called it, this one took 6 days to get to the 5-day blastocyst stage suitable for freezing) thought "I'll show them..." and went above and beyond the call.

And indeed it did! It also made me realise that this little one decided upon the stealthy 'divide and conquer' approach to survive, so now I have dubbed their collective tummy name as 'The Overlords'. No peas in a pod around here, that's for sure!

(and it's amused me today because I can throw random comments into the conversation such as "the overlords are hungry" and "the mission for uterine domination continues". Ahh, small things :P)

So here they are, meet the Overlords, both measuring at 6w5d (Rowan always measured two days smaller also).

In the picture, you can see one yolk sac in front of the other (the circles in the middle), with a baby at the top and bottom.