A trip to the ER & 20 Fun Facts About Twins!

ER VISIT
The day before Thanksgiving my doctor had me go to the ER just to be safe. I had been having an increased feeling of pressure and pain. And it wasn't ligament pain (which is absolutely awful by the way!), I could tell it was something different. His office was closed and so was the high risk doctors due to the holidays. So, the ER it was (I was very impressed with the hospital and staff by the way!). He wasn't worried about the small changes in bleeding, but was worried about the pain and pressure because that can sometimes be a sign of early labor/shortening of the cervix. Everything looked great though! My cervix needed to be at least 2.5cm, 1cm = very scary, bed rest, and a possible cerclage (cervix stitched closed). Mine measured at a great 4.4, but they're gonna keep a good eye on it, and I'm supposed to rest a little more. We love good news! So grateful for a caring doctor who is willing to text and call me on his days off, and arrange my pre-arrival with the hospital so we wouldn't be there as long!

 We got to see the babies on the ultrasound screen again, Blake was so happy since he missed the last one! We absolutely love their tiny, adorable toes! Baby A was very active again, flopping and flipping all over the place. Baby B was just kicked back again, ha ha. Wasn't sleeping and still moving, but not having a party like it's brother or sister next door, lol. So in love with these two! Baby A measured 44.5mm with a heart rate of 175, and Baby B measured 47.3mm with a heart rate of 158. They seem to take turns with growing and then measuring the same. Both measured approx 11 weeks 3 days on Wednesday. I will be 12 weeks tomorrow, woo hoo!! So happy to make it out of the "scary zone"!

The ER treated me for a very mild bladder infection, no idea I even had one. They said I'm basically experiencing growing pains, but that the babies look great. It's only gonna get worse, so I'm supposed to rest extra and take Tylenol on really painful days. Following up with Dr. O on Monday. A belly support band and heating pad were recommended to me to help with the pressure/pain. Just so glad they're ok and growing, we hate scares though!

FUN FACTS 
Twins are amazing! I think our favorite facts are 1, 5, 6 and 7. So interesting! Our twins have been deemed as Dichorionic Diamniotic (DCDM). That means they have separate amnions and chorions (amniotic sacs and chorionic sacs - chorionic membrane is the outer most membrane closest to the placenta). The fertility center said that they had separate placentas early on, so they're fraternal. But at the last ultrasound in the ER, it appeared that they have only one placenta to the tech. It is common to have the two placentas fuse though. We will know more regarding the placenta(s) over the next few weeks hopefully because of the testing coming up. Sometimes it's impossible to tell though and couples must wait to have the placenta examined at birth to dicifer if their babies are identical. Of course if it's a boy and girl they're fraternal. We can't wait to find out the genders!

1. Twins bond in the womb. By examining 3D ultrasound images, a study in Padova, Italy found that fetuses start deliberately interacting at 14 weeks.

2. University of Utah researchers who studied birth and death records between 1800 and 1970 found that the mothers of twins tend to live longer than moms without twins.

3. Identical twins share the same DNA but do not have the same fingerprints. Even though they have identical DNA, fingerprints are formed by babies touching the amniotic sac, whose unique forms and ridges leave us with our individual fingerprints.

4. 22 % percent of twins are left handed, compared to 10% in singletons.

5. What sounds like kids' babbling could actually be cryptophasia, a language developed between twins that only they can understand. Research published in the journal Institute of General Linguistics found that twin babies often use each other to learn vocabulary. The research estimates that up to 40 percent of twins create a private language.

6. A mother's chest will heat up or cool down to regulate the temperature of a baby held on her chest. When a mother holds twins, each breast can independently adjust its own temperature to account for each child.

7. How to tell apart identical twins? Belly buttons! They are not genetic, they are scars left from removing the umbilical cord; and each one is slightly unique.

8. About 1 in 250 pregnancies results in identical twins.

9. The birthrate for twins has increased 76% since 1980, an uptick that some experts attribute to older women having children (women in their thirties are more likely than women in their twenties to have twins). Or maybe women are getting taller: A Long Island Jewish Medical Center study found that women who birth twins or other multiples were, on average, more than an inch taller than women who only birthed one child at a time.

10. For polar bears, twins aren’t unusual at all. In fact, they most commonly give birth to twins, and rarely deliver single cubs or triplets.

11. An extremely rare condition called superfetation occurs when a pregnant woman continues to menstrate and a second embryo forms. Often, the fetus conceived last is born prematurely, while the fetus conceived first is carried to term, but in some cases, the babies are born on the same day.

12. There is a “twin gene” – fraternal twining, which is the result of a woman releasing more than one egg at the same time, is genetically predisposed. Identical twins are the result of a random split of a single egg and cannot be genetically predisposed.

13. Nigeria has the highest rate of multiple births and more identical twins. China has the lowest rate for multiple births averaging 1 in 300.

14. Just as any brothers and sisters, fraternal twins will have about half of their genetic makeup in common. They will share about 50% of their DNA, the same as any siblings. Each individual receives half of their DNA from Mom's egg and half from Dad's sperm, and so any two offspring will have some overlapping qualities.

15. A study shows vegans are five times less likely to have twins than women who consume dairy. 

16. They tend to be early – over 60% of twins are born before 37 weeks. The average birth weight for a twin is 5lbs, 5 oz.

17. Due to complications such as the water breaking prematurely, twins can sometimes be born weeks to months apart. The record for time between births of twins is thought to be 87 days, nearly 3 months.

18. During pregnancy, the placenta provides vital sustenance to the baby. In a multiple pregnancy with dizygotic (fraternal) twins, a placenta develops for each baby. Sometimes, however, the two placentas fuse together and appear to be one single placenta. Since some monozygotic (identical) twins have one placenta, this can make it difficult to determine zygosity (identical or fraternal) in utero. Because they have their own placentas, fraternal twins are not at risk for some of the risky conditions that affect monozygotic twins, such as TTTS.

19. Three-fourths of all twins are fraternal. Half of these pairs are boy/girl, one-fourth girl/girl, and one-fourth boy/boy.

20. Fraternal twins are not expected to have the same intelligence level or rate of growth. They're no more alike than regular nontwin siblings.