The 13 Week Scan - Back Story - Part 3

November 2005. We were nervous and excited. Emma was feeling semi okay this afternoon as the morning sickness had worn off a little. When I say morning sickness I realised quite quickly that it meant throwing up any time of the day or night, they don’t tell you that little fact.

We waited as each couple went in and out with their files and folder full of new baby stuff. They called out Emma’s name, my heart did that thing where it seems to move half way up your chest. This was it.

Emma lay on the bed; there was a TV screen above the end of the bed where we both could see the event. The sonographer said some stuff about what was going to happen. The gel went on Emma’s stomach, the sonographer turned out the light and it was show time.

Within about a minute of me staring at stuff on the screen I didn’t really understand, the sonographer came out with “are you seeing what I’m seeing” Emma said “is it twins?” the sonographer nodded her head.

After my first reaction of “Oh My God” I sat there in a daze looking up at the screen in ore with both my hands on my face with I’m sure, a look of complete shock. My mind was going back to conversations with my mum and aunt about there being twins in the family and also conversations with Emma’s mum and dad about the same thing on their side. “It skips a generation you know” after Emma’s mum told me that her mother in law was a twin. At the time I just laughed thinking that it isn’t going to happen!
The sonographer carried on explaining where things were and I could pick out the bodies now with their little hearts beating ten to the dozen. She took all of the measurements of the little beans, it was great. We got three pictures, one of them on their own and one together.

Bean 1

Bean 2

Before she finished, she showed us an empty area where there could have been a third embryo which never developed. At that point I didn’t take in what she said much because I was still in shock. I think about how that would have changed our lives even more with triplets but I don’t think about it too much.

We had to stick around the hospital a lot longer now because everything had just got more complicated. We couldn’t have the usual Down syndrome tests because it didn’t work on twins. They had to do a different test and it had to be done on that day. I didn’t mind though because there were more scans to measure the baby’s heads for water pressure or something but we got a good look at our little beans moving around for about twenty minutes.

We got out of the hospital. We phoned everyone. Emma’s mum just laughed down the phone, I think she was a little in shock too. I went back to work in shock. I don’t remember much about the rest of the day after that.