"Let's just see how many babies are in there--one or two," Wendy half-kidded us before starting the ultrasound. A minute later came her announcement. "Yep, there's two of them. It's twins." Our initial reaction was the same. "You're joking, right?" Dr. Hartshorne then enlarged the ultrasound (shown above) to show us in black and white. "No, I'm not kidding," she told us. "See, here's Baby A and here's Baby B. It's definitely twins."

Ever since the two of us were married on November 13, 1999 (a year and four days earlier than our doctor's appointment) friends and family had always told us (as well as telling our twins, Mark and Darlene) it would be inevitable that we would have twins of our own. But we usually dismissed those predictions. Both sets of twins, Diane and Darlene, and Craig and Mark, took DNA tests before we were married and both tests came back showing each set of twins were identical. Which should mean that we would have no greater chance of having twins than any other parents.

Except that Diane and Darlene never believed the results of their test (they had always been told they were fraternal and still insisted the test results were wrong) and there is also a history of fraternal twins in their family as their grandmother had given birth to twins Connie and Donnie, who sadly passed away shortly after birth. Whether Diane or Darlene were fraternal or identical, there is strong statistical data that both women may have a greater chance of giving birth to fraternal twins than other women without a history of fraternal twins in their family.

We had scheduled an early (nine weeks) ultrasound because of some past medical problems during pregnancies on Diane's side of the family. And in the back of each of our minds, we had realized that with the history of fraternal twins in Diane's family that we might as well have the early ultrasound to check for multiples, too. Still, neither one of us really thought it could be twins.

Diane wasn't experiencing any morning sickness or nausea, two telltale signs early in a pregnancy that it could be twins or higher. She was gaining a little more weight than you might project at nine weeks, but nothing too substantial. And then the doctor's news was given to us...

It's very early in the pregnancy and we're aware of the many added risks in pregnancies involving multiples. At this point, we're like any other parents-to-be--anxious to provide the best prenatal care to our babies, eager to learn all we can and enjoying the wonderment of the development of our twins. We'll keep you posted on the progress of the pregnancy.