Currently I’m sitting at 26 weeks, the rear end of the 2nd trimester. It seems like during the last few weeks I’ve been growing 24/7! I’ve started questioning whether or not I will make it as far as 38 weeks (which is full term for a twin pregnancy). I mean how much more room do these babies need, there’s not much space! How do triplets and quads even grow in there!!!  I suspect the babies I’m housing aren’t small babies either and I’m too scared to even hop on the scales. My eyes do not need to see those numbers, especially during this hormonal roller coaster ride!

It hasn’t been until the last couple of weeks that I’ve started to get a few comments on, “oh and how much longer do you have to go now?” or “it must not be too much longer for you now.” I react by laughing and saying yeah I have awhile….. followed by an awkward silence and then I usually pipe up that “its twins”.

I have found throughout this pregnancy that as soon as the “twin” word is mentioned it takes the conversation to a new level. Whatever I was doing goes on hold, until a number of questions have been answered.  This is generally followed by a positive comment or well wishes with everything to come. I don’t seem to be in a rush these days, so I don’t mind having a chat. However my daughter isn’t generally keen on the small talk which means she’s off and on the go, followed by a very pregnant Mama that can barely keep up!

At first I didn’t really understand the fuss with the reactions I was getting from people, having grown up with twin siblings, twins just seemed like a normal thing to me. As time went on I found the more the “twin” word was mentioned, the more excited reactions from strangers I got that all had a number of questions that would follow on. It occurred to me that maybe I should look into the odds  of how common/uncommon having twins were.

Thanks to the NZ multiple club and my local multiple club I was given a whole lot of information to help get my head around my life to come. According to the information they have supplied, twin pregnancy occurs in roughly 1.5- 2% of pregnancies and roughly 1 in 70 births in NZ are twin births. There we have it! It was pretty handy having the stats on hand and I must admit, I felt pretty cool belonging to a special club.

I’m not going to lie some of the attention has been quite nice, people look at you in awe like you have some special power or when they tell you “you’re so clever” for producing two babies that are a different gender. “Like how did you do that?” I only wish I knew…. I must have some sort of special power. But not really, its all in the gene’s baby!!!  The type of twins that I’m having are fraternal, which do run in families and if your a women in her 30’s, your more likely to have twins because your menstrual cycle is realising more eggs per cycle. The different genders, well it’s all written in the gene’s I guess!!!

I find a burning question is “how different is a multiple pregnancy to a singleton pregnancy?” I feel like this is a harder question to answer as every pregnancy is different regardless of it being a singleton or multiple pregnancy. Some women love being pregnant and breeze through it and others can have a really rough time regardless of if they are carrying one baby or more.

I’ve personally only started to find this pregnancy a lot more exhausting during the past couple of weeks. It turns out that I’m now roughly a similar size to what I was at full term with my daughter. For me that kind of explains it, the extra weight. I feel like I’m full term right now, yet I still have a while to go. I guess I am growing double. Prior to that I felt ok, naturally some days were more exhausting than others, but if you have a toddler its a given! Sometimes I even forgot that I was pregnant running around after a toddler, until I noticed I was slower!

Now the funs only just beginning, I kinda wish I did have a superpower to see what lies ahead, but then where would be the fun in that!

Bye for now,

Lennae xxx