Saturday 10 December 2016

We had a meeting and we decided that you definitely need to be asleep

babies never sleep. ever.


that is all.

I think your machine needs calibrating there lady, it's showing two heads

That's what I said to the ultrasound lady who was doing my early scan. Ultrasound must have an echo, look at that, it's showing double the image. Hah, lady you should fix that up. 

"The machine doesn't need calibrating." The technician doesn't turn around.

"But.. it's showing a mirror image, look at it, two heads. Clearly needs some kind of adjusting. There's two heads." I privately rolled my eyes at the technician.

She smears more gel around, pushes here, pushes there.

"No, definitely not the machine. There's two."

"Say what now, there's two what now. Two what. Two babies?"

Silence.

"There's two babies? There's two babies? Are you kidding me?"

I look at my Bear. He is laughing and grinning.

I look back at the screen.

I look at her face. She turns from the screen, smiling. "Yes, there's two in there. You've got two babies here."

All of a sudden the screen is all I can see. There's two baby shapes, curled up like beans, side by side. Holy fucking crap on a bike. I'm having two babies? All of a sudden my new relationship with my baby is dissolved into fiction, and I'm left with a blank place where a baby was. Two babies? How will I get to know two babies? How do I even hold two babies at once? What the actual fuck, TWO BABIES?? I've not prepared the emotional nest for two babies, I can't wrap my head around loving a crowd of people for god's sake, how will I be mother to an AUDIENCE OF TWO? All of a sudden my intimate relationship with my child is violently gear-changed into a generic relationship with a faceless mass of children that I'll never get to know properly.

It took about half an hour for the news to sink in. Two little babies, two little beans who will need my love like they'll need air, food and water. And two little creatures who will have each other too. They took the blood in four vials for the genetic tests that will tell us if they're at high risk of having downs syndrome and another two genetic diseases. I remember looking at the vials sitting on the kidney dish and wishing with all my heart: Be good my babies, be good and perfect and come back to me with perfect news. And with that, my new relationship in my mind burst into life - my babies that I love, that I will nurse and protect and guide for my whole life. My two babies that I love so much already.

It's going to be fucking chaos but it'll be our chaos, all four of us. Now, we wait for the blood tests to come back. Let the universe follow through on all this amazing luck, and complete this incredible streak of outrageous fortune with a clear test result, two babies growing to as close to full term as possible, and the arrival of our healthy cubs unharmed. 

Holy crap, it's twins.