It’s been a long time since I last posted…a little over a year and a half?!?! Downright shameful. But we’ve had a lot going on, so I have a lot to catch you up on. Honestly, I don’t even remember what we were up to before April of 2015, so I guess I’ll start with the most important news:

I got pregnant!! It was crazy exciting and we anxiously awaited our first visit with the OB to confirm our pregnancy. Of course they don’t want you to come in before 7 or 8 weeks, and I took a test really early (like probably earlier than I should have-a week before I was even due for that time of the month) so it felt like EONS before our appointment. In reality it was about a month, because I think our appointment was 7 weeks on the nose (according to my calculations anyway).

We found out right before Mothers Day, and we were going to Tampa to see Joey’s parents. It was really early to tell, but we couldn’t let this opportunity go by. 🙂 We bought his mom a “grandmother” charm for her pandora bracelet and gave it to her for mothers day. She was confused, but his dad finally got it, and began bawling. It was cute. 🙂

We rushed home that night, and had my parents over for dinner. My mom’s gift came in the form of this onesie that I quickly put together.

My favorite is this action shot of them opening it! I wish we’d gotten an action shot of Joey’s parents. I think  Joey tried to video it with his phone but I don’t think it turned out.

It was a hit! On both counts!
Not long after, this sweet angel Suzanna, my best friend’s daughter was born.

I was able to be at the hospital during the labor and delivery (although not present for the delivery of course, but I got to see her pretty soon after!) I wouldn’t have missed this event for the world, and it was a good introduction to how the L & D wing works and the women’s pavillion in general. It was SO hard not telling everyone then, but it was Suzanna’s special day. But it almost killed me keeping it quiet. lol.

Joey and I went to visit the new family a few days later and held and loved on our new “niece.” It was Joey’s first time holding a newborn. He was scared, haha, but handled it like a champ.

And this is when told Julia and Matt. We just couldn’t hold it in anymore. (Actually now that I think about it, this is out of order, Suzanna was born just before Mothers Day, and we visited just before we left for Tampa…so Julia and Matt were the first to know our news…but shush don’t tell our parents…haha. JK our parents are probably the only people that read this blog.)

FINALLY the day came, and first thing was first, they sent us off for an ultrasound with a technician before we saw the doctor.  And this is what we saw:

Yes…you are seeing that right…there are two 🙂 A and B. I saw it immediately and started crying and cursing and laughing all simultaneously. Joey thought something was wrong because he was watching my face instead of the screen (and cause he’s a dude and up until this point hadn’t paid attention to other people’s sonograms before and didn’t really know what he was looking at). Then the tech said TWINS!!! And suddenly he understood my reaction.

The funny and weird part about this is that just a few days before the ultrasound I started to worry that there were two. I had at least two conversations with friends about it, one with my work wife Megan where I mentioned I feared there were two…and she told me I was silly. Then the day before the ultrasound I took the day off to spend with my best friend Julia while she was on maternity leave. I asked her, “is it weird that I have this irrational fear there will be two in there?”
“No,” she responded, “Matt and I had that same fear while we were in the waiting room just before that first ultrasound…I think it’s normal.  I’m sure there’s only one in there.”

I told Joey about it that night, that night before. We laughed nervously about it, I’m not sure the thought had crossed his mind yet. The next day was a shock. I was glad we had the foresight to take the day off of work. Our OB was gleeful about it, twins are pretty common these days, but spontaneous twins (meaning without the aid of fertility drugs or treatments) are still pretty rare she told us. But they tend to have better outcomes, and easier pregnancies, she told us. We asked if they were fraternal or identical (that is all we knew to ask about twins at the time) and she said that they were in two separate sacs, which was good news because when they share a sac they can steal nutrients from each other and have problems. She said it was impossible to know for sure if they were fraternal or identical because they could have been identical initially but later split into two sacs. Or if they were fraternal they could have come from two eggs and always lived in two sacs. The only way to know was DNA testing, or if they were mixed genders then they would for sure be fraternal (I didn’t know this until we were pregnant with twins, but identicals are either boy/boy or girl/girl, boy/girl are always fraternal. Which makes sense if you think about it, but I hadn’t spent much time thinking about it. I’m sure I’ve asked people like our friend Jane the dumb question of whether her boy/girl twins were identical or not.)

Aside from this though, truly, the rest of the appointment was a blur. We were still trying to absorb the magnitude of what was ahead of us. My mom knew we had the appointment and of course wanted me to call her immediately when it was over. But this was big news. And I wanted to tell her in person. So I called my mom told her it went well, we were pregnant and everything was fine and healthy, and set up plans for dinner with my parents to show them the ultrasound.

We of course also called Joey’s parents since they live in Tampa and we wouldn’t be able to see them in person. Joey sent his parents the picture right after the ultrasound but they didn’t see it till later because they were busy. Naturally, they were pumped!

Since we were really still processing the twin info, and almost no one knew about the pregnancy, we were dying to show off our babies and talk it through some more. haha. So we dropped by Julia’s since she was home on maternity leave. I had to show her that yes in fact there WERE two in there. haha. She laughed so hard, and was a good sport about us just dropping by like that. In fact, around that time, Matt called and Julia told him the news and he immediately left work for lunch, and came to see us too. haha. We could see a little bit of terror in their eyes for us though, as they were still navigating the waters of a newborn and couldn’t imagine having two of them. We really couldn’t imagine it either.

We then went to lunch, and to a movie. Again, I’m so glad we took the whole day off work. Recently I was trying to remember what movie we saw, like I said the whole day was a blur, I couldn’t remember to save my life, but luckily  Joey did. It was The Avengers: Age of Ultron. So there you go babies, that’s what we saw. 🙂 Clearly it was super memorable.

This photo is really nothing special without context, but we got to the theater kind of early, and just sat there and read as much online as we could about twins. Frantically trying to absorb as much as possible. I may have started a secret twins board on pinterest while we were waiting there…

Later that night, we went to my parents for dinner and showed my parents the ultrasound without saying anything. My dad looked at it for a long time without saying anything. Really scrutinizing it. You could tell he knew something was wrong with it, but didn’t want to say anything. My mom remarked that they look a lot different than when Justin and I were little. lol. We told them that was because there were two, baby A and baby B. My parents about died. For the first 24 hours my mom said she just repeated the word twins over and over again. haha. I can validate that at least for the two hours we were there that that’s pretty much all she said. 🙂 My dad finally told her later that it just meant twice the fun.

This is when my mom reminded me that twins run on her side of the family. Both on her mom and her dad’s side. So from there we pretty much knew they were likely to be fraternal no matter the sexes. Never in my life did I think it would be a possibility that I’d have twins. It took several weeks for this knowledge bomb to sink in.

Next up…how we told everyone else, and about a thousand ultrasound photos. 🙂