Our Journey Towards Parenthood

The idea to document the chaos of this journey came to me while rocking my then 17 month old to sleep as we prepared for the arrival of the twins. I quietly sobbed as I thought about how our lives were going to change. I was mourning the end of his era as a single child and all of the special uninterrupted memories we had shared the past year and a half. I had seen how quickly all of the baby stages flew by with Ike and I was terrified of missing these same moments with the girls because of the impending chaos of three kids under two years old. I committed then to documenting our upcoming adventure. 

A few years back I engaged in a therapeutic writing process resulting in a memoir detailing my experience with miscarriage and pregnancy following a loss (CLICK HERE to check it out on Amazon if at all interested!)

There was something cathartic about sitting with my thoughts for long enough to process their impact on my life and create written work exploring that impact. It is my hope that this writing process will allow me to gain similar insight into my new role as a mother to three: assuming I can find the time for writing!

My husband Jon and I’s journey towards parenthood began in July of 2021 which in some ways feels like yesterday and in others an entire lifetime ago. It truly has been a journey and I am so thankful to have navigated these ups and downs with my best friend.

Our first pregnancy happened relatively quickly after deciding to start a family. We saw this little baby’s strong heartbeat on ultrasound twice at seven and nine weeks pregnant. Unfortunately this heartbeat was notably absent at our 12 week ultrasound resulting in a D&C procedure and indescribable anger and heartbreak.  We learned that this baby was a boy and will forever remember him as the beginning of our beautiful family.

Throughout this first short pregnancy, we lovingly referred to this growing baby as Tadpole and following the loss we began to see frogs as a symbol of our little guy. Frogs hopping around the pond in our backyard are now forever seen as messages from our grown up Tadpole in heaven. The nursery and baby shower for our next pregnancy were frog themed as a way to honor big brother Tadpole as he watches over his little brother and sisters.

We found out we were pregnant again in January of 2022.  An uneventful 9 months complicated only by the anxiety of pregnancy following a loss resulted in our first earthside baby boy, Ike, in September of 2022. I remember feeling like I had finally found my purpose in being this little boy’s momma.  

Together Jon and I navigated the postpartum emotions, sleep deprivation and lifestyle changes required to welcome a new baby. Each milestone he hit was another I hit learning to be a new mom. I truly enjoyed each moment of this new life with my little bestie by my side every step of the way. 

By the time Ike was 10 months old I really felt like I had hit my stride as a new mom.  But just like a toddler falling backwards after running face first into a closed screen door, that unplanned second pink line showed up breaking that stride and making me question everything I thought I had learned in this parenting journey thus far. That is not to say that we were not excited because we absolutely were, but the beginning of our next pregnancy was far from uneventful.

Two days after my positive pregnancy test I had a significant amount of bleeding.  Because of my previous experience with miscarriage, that is where my mind immediately went.  It was too early to see anything on ultrasound so the doctor advised me to complete blood draws every 48 hours to determine if my HCG (pregnancy hormone) levels were rising as expected, and surprisingly they were. I continued to bleed and the HCG levels continued to rise and more than double with each blood draw. It was a confusing roller coaster of emotions and little did we know the ride was just beginning. 

We went in for our first ultrasound around 6 weeks pregnant and thought we solved the mystery. The doctor discovered two pregnancy sacs, one with an appropriately developing baby (though slightly smaller than expected) and the other an empty sac. She explained that we were likely pregnant with twins and miscarried one which could explain the early bleeding. She did want us to return to get a stronger visualization that the one baby was growing as expected. 

We spent that week navigating the complicated emotions of vanishing twin syndrome- thankful that we had a potentially healthy baby, disheartened and disappointed that we lost one baby, and confused as to why this loss felt so much different than our first experience with miscarriage. 

When we returned one week later for a follow up ultrasound, we were shocked to see that the second sac was no longer empty and instead housed a second baby with a strong heartbeat thumping alongside their twin.  We were filled with relief, surprise and excitement for a few brief moments before we hit the next hill on this roller coaster ride of emotions.  The doctor carefully studied the ultrasound before saying “actually I think there may be two heartbeats in this first sac, and one in the second which would indicate triplets, but it is still very early and hard to tell.”  I don’t think Jon or I blinked as our jaws dropped to the floor. 

We spent the next few weeks going to weekly ultrasounds at Maternal Fetal Medicine where they used high definition ultrasounds and were still unable to definitively determine if there were two or three heartbeats growing inside of me.  The term “conjoined twins” was also mentioned as the potential reason why it was so difficult to determine the number of babies.  We would of course take on whatever challenges life threw our way, but wrapping our minds around potentially conjoined triplets in addition to our 10 month old baby at home was daunting to say the least. 

It wasn’t until our ultrasound around 9 and a half weeks that the babies were big enough to show us that there were in fact only two perfectly healthy babies growing in their own sacs with their own placentas.  We officially were having dichorionic diamniotic twins or didi twins which was medically the safest type of twins to carry.

People have since asked us how shocked we were when we found out we were having twins, which is a challenging question to answer.  In a matter of 6 weeks we went from assuming it was one baby, to thinking we were having a chemical miscarriage, to carrying one baby with a twin we lost to vanishing twin syndrome, to twins, triplets and the potential of conjoined triplets and then back to didi twins (the simplest form of twins).  Without going into all of the above details, people are typically surprised when our answer is “we weren’t shocked, we were relieved and excited.”

That is the cliffnotes version of the winding road our family has traveled to get to the point of three kids under two years old. It is hard to imagine that this roller coaster ride is actually just beginning, but buckle up!