Twenty years ago I had the shock of my life. After a year of unsuccessful attempts to have a baby, I had finally seen the coveted two lines on a pregnancy test. A few weeks after the positive test, I started having issues which made me think I was losing the baby. I made an appointment, and my husband and I went to see the doctor.
As I lay on the examining table and the tech rubbed the gooey gel on my stomach to prepare me for the ultrasound, I felt so sure we were having a miscarriage. I held up my shirt and stared at the dark ceiling. Not daring to peek at what was on the monitor—not that I could’ve even deciphered all those streaks of light and gray-white blobs anyway—I just let the tears slide into my ears and concentrated on breathing.
Brent held my hand while the woman moved the wand around my abdomen. Suddenly I heard Brent gasp. He had spotted something on the monitor. “Am I seeing…” he began to ask before his voice trailed off in bewilderment.
“I’m not supposed to tell you anything,” the tech revealed in an almost whisper, “but there are two of them.”
My mind was whirring with what complications they had seen in the ultrasound. Did my baby have two heads? The tears were coming in torrents now. Then Brent breathed the word: twins.
It had never occurred to me in all my fantasies about becoming a mother—and let me say, I am a world-class daydreamer—that I would have twins. They didn’t “run in my family” (most everyone’s first question) and I hadn’t used fertility drugs. Twins just weren’t on my radar. It was such a gob-smack of a surprise.
After our appointment was finished, Brent and I went to eat lunch. We decided on the drive to a Mexican restaurant that we would wait until I was farther along to tell anyone our news. Yes…absolutely. We should wait. Then I went in the restroom to wash my hands before we ate, and I noticed a woman also washing her hands at the sink next to me. She was a complete stranger, but I turned to her and said, “I’m pregnant with twins.” I’m sure I had the kookiest grin on my face at that moment. She nodded and backed out of the room as if I had just escaped from the looney bin.
I confessed my transgression to Brent as soon as I returned to our table. I told him I just had to get it out of my system, and now I would be good. I kept my promise, and we told family and friends the big news over Thanksgiving. The following May, I gave birth to twin daughters.
A lot of that day seems like a dream now. Our twin daughters, who I consider to be sisters who just happened to have the same birthday, continue to surprise and delight me with every passing year. It’s been two decades since I knew they were sharing the same little room inside me, but their existence still strikes me as just as wonderfully miraculous as it did so many Octobers ago.
