Boys or Girls or One of Each?

A few weeks ago we went to see a Perinatologist (a high-risk OB) to check on the twins.  The regular ultrasound tech thought that perhaps they were identical and sharing nutrients and blood.  Right away he agreed with the tech and told us that they were identical twins and as soon as he found the sex of one baby we would know the sex of both.  Baby B was very proud of his "he parts" and was happy to give the doctor a good long look and time to take a picture.  "Identical Boys" Dr. C. announced and Mark was happy to have his wish.  I made a comment about beating the odds (Mark's generation of Smallwood men have all girls so far).

Then he went over to Baby A to check out his anatomy and start taking measurements of everything else.  The doctor zoomed in, zoomed out, moved around and zoomed in again, then said something like "Well I don't think they're identical anymore, because I'm pretty sure this one is a girl."  Whoa...what happened to if we know one we know them both?  The doctor pulled up a split screen of Baby B's "money shot" and Baby A's "money shot" and commented that if they were identical boys "those should look the same, but they don't look the same." 

Almost everything else looked great. He said Baby A's heart was a beautiful 4-chamber heart earlier than he expected it to be.  Baby Boy's brain was perfect and he also had a great looking heart.  The only things he was unsure about was the identical twins vs boy-girl twins thing and a few cysts in Baby A's brain that he thought were actually pseudocysts.  He wasn't worried about them too much because the genetic/chromosomal disorders that are most commonly associated with brain cysts have other indicators that weren't present in our baby.  In fact, every other thing they use as an indicator was very clearly not a problem.  He scheduled us for a February visit and told us that he expected the cysts would be gone by then.  We left the visit with 100% Baby B is Boy and 80-85% Baby A is a girl.  He also asked to look at old ultrasound pictures because the other indicator, besides gender, that tells doctors if twins are identical or not still seemed to be pointing to identical twins.  However, since it is impossible to have identical twins of opposite gender he hoped that seeing pictures of everything before it grew so big would help clear up the problem in question and help determine Baby A's gender. 

I went back to the perinatologist today to check on Baby A's brain and sex and get more information on how they were both growing.  Sure enough Baby A's brain looked great this time.  No cysts and no pseudocysts!  He was able to use a combination of notes from the Tulsa clinic and old ultrasound photos to determine that they are not sharing anything and are therefore not identical.  Today we also saw that Baby A is a girl for sure.  We are both so pleased to have one of each. Yay!  

I'll admit that I was nervous Baby A would all of a sudden be a very obvious boy.  It's a Smallwood tradition to announce the pregnancy in a cute, fun, or creative way, but since everyone knew we were doing IVF I didn't really feel like we got to do a special announcement.  I was so giddy to announce gender and finally have a fun announcement that I sent out homemade scratch off gender announcements to our family right after our January visit.  Thankfully I won't be making any embarrassing phone calls this week correcting the sex of Baby A!

As of today Baby Boy is weighing in at 1 pound and Baby Girl is at 14 ounces.  I can feel Baby Girl move a lot more often than Baby Boy, but the doctor said with the way everything is situated in there he isn't surprised I can't feel Baby Boy as much.   I can only really feel Baby Boy's hard kicks.  I should be able to feel him better as he gets bigger and stronger and can move around enough to make an impact on the cushion that is surrounding him.  Baby Girl doesn't have as much cushion around her so I can feel her move or kick/punch throughout the day, but since she is smaller they aren't as strong.  Every time I feel more than 2 or 3 kicks in a row I call Mark over, but every single time either Baby Boy stops doing it at the sound of my voice or it's Baby Girl and Mark can't feel it.

We're loving this new experience and both doctors said to expect the babies in May instead of their June 12th due date.  Did you know twins are considered full term by 37 weeks instead of 40 weeks?  My regular OB said almost any time in May is fair game for them to make an appearance, but if they can make it to week 35 (May 8th) then they should be pretty well prepared to go home from the hospital with me and not be kept in the NICU beyond a possible day or two for monitoring.  He also said he would not let them get to week 38 (May 29th) or other complications could arrive during delivery.  It sounds like instead of 4 months we only have 3 months to wait until we get to meet these little ones!  I'm not going to complain one bit about having them come sooner rather than later!