"Another baby"

I looked at J, my mouth open, he was sort of laughing, I guess it was a mild form of hysteria.
The Consultant looked at me, and then at J, "You can swear if you want to" he said.
"Bloody Hell!" said J.
"Well there's no question about the nuchal scan now," the consultant laughed "Twins calls for a nuchal, serum screening isn't effective diagnostically when there are two babies".

We don't have a family history of twins, as far as we know there have never been twins in J's family, and though there have been in my maternal line they're identical twins and the other half of their make up is a genetic line packed with identical twins. My father's family is a bit of a mystery, his mother having been a foundling and his father a secret she took to her grave, but the one set of twins there that we know of was again identical,  and again the clearly apparent in the non-family side of the line.
The most likely cause factors were that I was now 40, though that's the lower end of the age at which the odds of twins starts to increase, and I had had previous children.

We were told that as far as the consultant could make out there was a clearly defined lambda between them , signalling that they each had their own amniotic sac, and that the shape at the base of this suggested that there were also two placentas.

"So they're not identical?" I said.

But apparently that's no longer thought to be the case, while one sac, one placenta twins are definitely identical, whether they have one each, or share, very much depends on how early the little bundle of cells holding the recipe for life splits.  Twins of the same sex can only be correctly identified, we now know, short of very obvious differences, by DNA testing. There are lots of adult twins out there who don't know that they are in fact identical.

Still two sacs and two placentas was very good news, it means that this is the least risky type of twin pregnancy, the more they have to share, the more dangers they face.

We left with a date booked for a nuchal scan and sat in the car for a while...

"Two babies!" I think those are pretty much the only words either one of us said for a few hours, "Twins!".

The twelve week dating scan...

A friend very kindly offered to come over and look after the younger two (Sam and her son were at school) while I picked J up from work and we went for the scan. I dropped a pretty big hint as to the reason for the appointment but didn't actually tell her in so many words...

Driving to J's office I idly wondered if my dates were wrong, the seatbelt felt just a little too tight, the steering wheel a little too close, perhaps I was 16 weeks pregnant and not just 12, that wasn't impossible, my period that month (sorry if TMI) had been a light one. My big concern was that this would mean it was too late for a nuchal scan and at 40 it seemed to make sense to have a nuchal scan. Though the procedure for this on the island included taking the bloods to the airport to have them couriered to the UK which was a little daunting.

Anyway I picked J up and we drove to the Medical Specialist group. Fortunately we didn't have to wait long. Waiting for early scans with a full bladder is never fun and sonographers are routinely overworked and run late. Here though the demand is lower and it's the actual consultant that does the dating scan.

We went into the office and answered questions for a bit. He asked about whether we'd want a nuchal scan (privately) or the quad bloods (offered free) and we said that we were hoping for his advice on this.
We filled in about half the form and then he said "Shall we do the scan, and check that all's well in there before we do the rest?"

I climbed onto the bed, had the gel applied and he turned on the machinery. The screen was up by my head so I had to incline my head slightly forward and right to see it. J stood at the foot of the bed with a clear view, the consultant sat to my right, scanner in hand, computer keyboard between him and the screen.
He put the probe (is that what it's called?) on my tummy and instantly we saw the baby.
"Ah yes" he said, moving it around, "There's the heart, beating away well, these are the hands which tell us you are over 10 weeks or we wouldn't be seeing them, and look you can make out the white dots which are developing into fingers."
It was the clearest scan I've ever seen, a brand new machine.
"I'll just start getting the measurements" he said and I tore my brimming eyes (I was hormonal, it makes me fluffy!) from the screen to look at J, as I did so, and as the consultant moved toward his keyboard, his hand slipped.
"Ooops, sorry! And that's your bowel! Oh no, oh, hang on, no that's not right..." I was beside myself, what was showing up on my thus far healthy scan? I couldn't look.
J though had had the best view, and a strange look was taking over his face.

"That's not your bowel," said the consultant  "That's another baby..."

In the beginning....

In the beginning there was just me, and then in October 2000 I met Jonathan, an old uni mate of a guy who had once dated a friend of mine for a bit.
We married in November 2004 and the whirlwind began. Within weeks it became clear that my mother-in-law was ill, that the "cold" she'd picked up during our wedding weekend, was, in fact, something more sinister.
By February 2005 she'd been diagnosed with lung cancer, she was just 60.
I found out soon after this that I was pregnant with our first child, the news buoyed her up for a while, she was excited about the prospect of a grandchild, the first family baby for 30 years,  and when she had the energy during a fairly experimental course of treatment she read baby magazines and insisted on buying a cot and pram and car seat.
She died in the June, the night before the scan that would have told her she was having a grandson.
He was born in November and was the joy of all, we named him Samuel, and call him Sam.

Sam was just short of ten months when we realised he wasn't going to be an only child. Josiah joined the family in June 07, weeks after his cousin, was born.  We'd planned to nickname him Jed, but his brother had other ideas and he's been 'Siah ever since.

We'd always wanted a bigger than average family and Reuben came next, 18 months after Josiah and 3 years and three weeks after Sam. Again our plans for him to be known as Roo were scotched by siblings and "Ben" was amongst us.

I broke my wrist when he was 4 months old - right in the middle of classic growth spurt time! - and had to have 2 operations in the next 6 months to get it right.

And then we moved house when he was 16 months, and two days after we moved in, still surrounded by boxes and packing cases, I was in the kitchen when J phoned to say he'd been offered another job, one that meant moving house, and country.

Five months later, with our possessions in a couple of removals vans, we disembarked from the ferry in St Peter Port, Guernsey and started another stage of our lives.
Sam started school and loved it.
We settled in to the new place and the new routine and we discussed the possibility of another baby: was four children madness? I was almost 40, was it too late? What if there were problems? Wasn't it nice now that the children were gaining some independence? Sam at school and 'Siah about to start? Would it be crazy to go back to even more broken sleep? Especially as neither of the younger two boys had ever managed more than a couple of nights of "sleeping through" - that's a couple of nights ever by the way, not a couple consecutively...
Undecided we settled into the "well let's just see shall we?" frame of thinking.

So in August, when I was sicker and more tired than I have ever been in my life, J asked if I thought a pregnancy test might be a good idea. And it turned out to be a very good idea. I was 6 weeks pregnant.

So, we were after all going to be the crazy people with four children aged 6 and under. Until we got to the 12 week scan....