If you follow me on Facebook, then you likely saw our recent announcement. If not, here it is…

We are expecting twin boys!! We are beyond excited!! Here’s how this blessing came to be.

If you’ve been following along on our fertility journey, you know that we had unexplained secondary infertility after an early miscarriage. After undergoing a surgery this spring, we decided to try on our own for another six months before seeking more help. That six months went by without any luck, so we turned to our amazing doctor, Dr. Shamma here in Toledo for assistance.

We followed his advice to a T and our treatments were successful. I cannot say enough good things about Dr. Shamma and his staff. They made a very stressful situation as positive as it could be.

My first trimester started off filled with excitement and joy that I was finally pregnant. Soon enough morning sickness reared it’s ugly head and I was so sick it was debilitating. I was pretty sick with Lila, but twin sickness was a whole new ballgame.

Thankfully I started taking Diclegis, which is a morning sickness medication made up of B6 and antihistamine, that took the edge off enough for me to be functional. Before that I was literally laying on the ground trying not to vomit much of the day. Even on Diclegis I had serious food aversions and  all-day nausea. Lets just say I have a TON of respect for women who have hyperemesis gravidarum. 

Other than morning sickness I had a very stressful and scary two weeks around weeks 12-13. I began spotting and then bleeding every night around 4am. It would stop in the morning, but each night I woke to the same nightmare. After having a miscarriage and infertility, any spotting is terrifying. Every time it happened, I would get an ultrasound, both babies looked great and there was no visible reason for the bleeding. Then around 14 weeks it stopped and hasn’t happened again. Thank goodness.

While I was so sick and having spotting, I was essentially on bedrest, which put a huge burden on Luke and our extended family to help out. Lila was definitely impacted by it all and for a few bad weeks was very angry with me. I went from her full-time caregiver to barely around. She would hardly even look at me for awhile! Thankfully I begin to feel less nauseous around week 16 and our relationship rebounded instantly.

I am 20 weeks today and besides some exhaustion, I am feeling good. My bump is pretty large and the babies are big as well. At my last appointment at 18 weeks, my belly was measuring 7 weeks ahead (compared to a singleton pregnancy)! However, I’m not too uncomfortable and am still sleeping well, so no complaints here.

The boys are fraternal twins, meaning they are like two separate siblings just born at the same time. I had my anatomy scan a week or so ago and both looked perfectly healthy and ACTIVE! On the ultrasound they were already rough-housing, with the top boy smacking the bottom one in the head. Don’t worry, the bottom one quickly retaliated and hit his brother right back. It was hilarious to watch.

I have a long way to go in this pregnancy and I’m sure pretty soon it will start to get uncomfortable and challenging, but for now I am just basking in my happiness about bringing two precious boys into our family. Lila says they’ll both be named “Lila” and can wear some of her jammies that are in boy colors. :)

Our journey to conceive these babies was not easy, but I would go through it all again to get to this same conclusion. Thank you all from the bottom of my heart for encouraging me to keep going when it got tough.