Shower them babies! And photos, too!

I had my baby shower on Sunday, organized by my sister, Molly, cousin Kelly and soon to be cousin-in-law, Liz. I even had the wife of my 2nd cousin there. Yep, we're a close family. I felt really loved and honored. My monster in law and niece, Hannah, even came into town all the way from Ohio and Pennsylvania.

Although the babies were the reason for the shower, of course, lots of people had Ryan in mind when they shopped. These boys are going to be decked out in "rocker" gear. Onesies with guitars, sleepers with drumkits - you name it, they got it. There were no soccer jersies or mini-hiking boots to honor mommy's passions, but that's OK, musicians are indeed much, much cooler. Roadie even got his own gift, as one guest made a donation in his name to the animal rescue organization where he came from (and where I volunteer). Big brother Roadie cannot be left out of the shower! After the babies come, I'm sure we'll get another dog from there. Right, Ry?

We had maternity photos yesterday, too. We did some at our house and some at the local park. Totally awkward. Ryan and I can't take such things seriously. Bless that photographer for her patience. There was a little girl walking in the park when I had my shirt pulled up a bit to show off the boys and she said, "Mommy, look at that lady's belly!" I actually recoiled more at being called a lady than the fact that my twin stomach has become something to point at.

"Your Babies are BIG!"

Those were the words of the doctor after my 25 week ultrasound today. The boys are measuring bigger than 65% of SINGLETON babies. They have big heads (Doran side) and long limbs (Haas side, duh), which must account for the monster weights. The good thing is that they are basically the same size. That's always the best case scenario - both babies growing at the same rate.

Other than that, the ultrasound was pretty uneventful. There were lots of people in the room at times - an RN, a resident, the doc, the technician, someone else who I don't know. Twins are a big deal still, I guess, which is interesting as more and more people have them.

Grandma Jean joined Ry and I at the ulstrasound today. She was amazed by the technology that has come out since she last gave birth 28 years ago. Get out of the dinosaur ages, Grandma-ma! She even got to see a 3-D image of Baby A. Rad.

Identical versus Fraternal Twins

You can imagine how often we get this question: "Are they identical or fraternal?" now that we know they are both boys (although, surprisingly, some people ask the same thing of boy/girl sets. Duh, people). Then, "Do they run in your family?"

Some people who ask are just trying to determine if we used fertility treatments or not because most babies helped along with drugs or IVF are fraternal. Other people are genuinely interested.

The answer is that we don't know. But I've learned a lot about the differences between the two types of twins.

Identical twins occur when one sperm fertilized one egg. That zygote then splits into two, creating two eventual babies with the exact same genetic make-up (but differing environmental influences throughout their lives affect which genes are switched on or off, if that makes sense, so identical twins aren't the exact same person). Identical twins, according to the experts, are a random occurrence. In other words, identical twins do NOT run in families. They occur at a rate of about 1/250 and every woman in this world has the exact same chance of having identical twins. The zygote can split at different times. If it splits very early, identical twins can have two placentas. If it happens later, they have just one placenta. If there is just one placenta, you know you have identical twins, as fraternal twins always have their own.

Fraternal twins, on the other hand, occur when two sperm fertilize two eggs. Without fertility treatments, a woman's chances are about 2/100 to have fraternal twins when she is younger than 30 and higher when she's over 35 (since her ovaries are having some sort of going out of business sale and just drop like crazy). The rate also increases significantly if the mother herself is a fraternal twin. Rates also increase when certain drugs are used, such as Clomid, which stimulate egg production, or when multiple embryos implant during IVF treatments.

So, in the fraternal scenario, a woman must release two eggs in one cycle for this type of twinning to take place. Dropping two eggs in one cycle can be a genetic trait - hence, fraternal twins DO run in families. And it comes ONLY from the mother's side in any given father/mother relationship. Having said that, Ryan could carry the gene for dropping two eggs but considering he doesn't actually do any egg dropping himself, he can't determine twins in our relationship - but he could pass it to any daughters we might have (hence, the whole theory of twins skipping a generation, which is only true when it comes through the father's side). Fraternal twins always have two placentas.

Since we are having two boys who each have their own placenta, they could be identical or fraternal. Given that I do have twins on my side 3 generations ago and given the fact that fraternal twins are so much more common, our doc says our chances are 80% that they are fraternal.

How will we ever know? Well, they could look very much unalike. But even if they look very much alike, they could be fraternal (Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen are NOT identical, for example). DNA testing is the only way to be really sure. Either way, since I'm younger than 30 and we used no fertility treatments, we should play the lottery more often.

Since Ryan and I have similar coloring, we're banking on their height telling us if they might be non-identical. I mean, if one comes out at 22 inches and the other at 17, you just know has Haas genes and the other Doran genes. No DNA testing needed there, that's for sure.

Hope this was super enlightening.

Belly Pics (Real)

OK, here they are...
Week 7 (bottom two pics)- Should've known it was twins, as I was already growing a bump that you can see in profile
Week 18 (middle pic)
Week 23 (top pic)
I grew a LOT early on...and have slowed down since then. I'm almost 6 months now and look like a typical 7 month pregnancy (trust me, I've used Google Images to compare almost daily). But I looked like I was 7 months along when I was 14 weeks, too! That was scary...