“Well, there’s two healthy babies in there…”

We found out we were having twins at our second scan and could have been better prepared to hear the news. It was our first day back at work after a honeymoon in the southern hemisphere and we had to dash from the hospital to a teacher training day. We were still a little jetlagged. I had drawn up a spreadsheet the night before to look at the initial costs involved in having *a* baby. There had also been a first scan, at 7 weeks in an IVF clinic, and that had identified just one embryo (yes, we did do IVF: if you are expecting twins, be warned – complete strangers will feel entitled to ask you if you undertook fertility treatment or if twins “run in the family”).

That said, there had been signs – when I took the blood test with the clinic they had wanted to see an HCG level of 100 and it was 539. I grew quite big, quite quickly (my wedding dress had to be taken out), and very sick. My heart rate climbed and, when walking the Tongariro Crossing in New Zealand, a 12 mile mountainous hike that I had completed without much difficulty aged 10, I hyperventilated on every incline and afterwards we thought I was miscarrying. When we went for our second scan, back in the UK, our hope was that there was still one healthy baby in there. We informed the lady taking the scan that we had experienced some concerns but that we had seen an embryo with a heartbeat at 7 weeks. She put on the gel and the probe.

We both immediately saw two babies. The sonographer whipped the screen away.

As she looked and checked, we held hands very tightly. Finally, she turned the screen back to us.

“Well, there’s two healthy babies in there!”

We carried on holding hands, even more tightly. She then took us through what could be seen in more detail.

Afterwards, in the waiting room, it’s fair to say that we were shocked and, aside from repeating “we’ll be all right”, we said very little. The fact that one embryo had “been hiding” on the earlier scan had lulled us into a false sense that it was a single-baby pregnancy. I’d already told the midwifery support workers that I was expecting one child and had to go back in and have my notes altered now a second one had appeared (“Blimey, one at the first scan, two at the second – I don’t want to be there for your third scan!”). One nurse told me about her own twins and that was my first sense of being in a new “club” – mothers of multiples. I asked at the desk if they had any information on twin pregnancies and was met with a blank look.

We talked about the increased risks for the pregnancy and about our finances but even from the start we felt a sense of joy as well as trepidation.

We left clutching a scan picture that showed our babies (at this stage) transverse, as if they were lying in little bunk beds.