Sunday, December 31, 2006

What type of physician?

During the early pregnancy stage you will pick out your care provider. This may sound like a simple process, but you actually want to be particular about who you chose and what type of practice they run. If you want to be really prepared walk into the doctors office with a list of questions, as listed below:


How long have you been in practice?
How many twins have you delivered?
Have you had any twins death related to delivery?
Do you normally recommend bed rest at an early date or are you more lenient?
Are you board certified?
What is your cesarean section rate? How many c sections do you do a month?
How busy is your practice? How many deliveries do you do a month?
How long do I have to wait for an appointment?
What testing do you do?
Do you deal with high risk pregnancies?
Who will be delivering me?
Where will I be delivered?
How are the support staff?
What insurance do you accept?


After you have chosen a doctor, you will have different questions. Always remember to write them down so that you can ask at the next visit. Doctors should always be willing to answer any questions.

Reading all the information

Okay, so now you found out you're having twins... and you're wondering what is going to happen to your body, your family, etc. Basically, you're saying how do I prepare? It's no joke, twins are a lot of work. I would suggest reading all the books you can on having twins, a twin pregnancy, and raising twins. There are also several Yahoo! groups you can join, just search the keyword twins and parents of twins at www.yahoogroups.com. If you are due to have them soon, look for a due date club with twins, they are rare, but very helpful. One good book is the Multiple Pregnancy Sourcebook by Nancy Bowers. In this book she has wrote a wealth of information from the beginning of pregnancy to the very end. Also ask your treating physician for any information he might have on classes for birthing twins, breastfeeding them, etc.

Saturday, December 30, 2006

Finding out you are pregnant with twins...

Most women who become pregnant with twins cannot tell the difference between a singleton pregnancy and a twin pregnancy in the very beginning. For me, after about 2-3 months I could tell a difference in the size and rate I was growing. I knew there was something different about this time than my other two pregnancies. I felt different, I had twice the nausea and it lasted twice as long, too. I thought at first that maybe it was from this being my third pregnancy or me being a little bit older, but I also had that mothers intuition. When my midwife told me I was doubling in size, I knew something was up. Sure enough it was confirmed by ultrasound at 16 weeks that I was having boy/girl twins. What a wonderful feeling that was!

I had no idea what was in my future...