This is why I am not a doctor

Last Wednesday I had an experience that proved why I will never be a doctor. It's a great story so I want all of you to hear it. First though I have to do a quick recap of my medical situation for those of you who are new/stopped paying attention. If you are in a hurry you can skip down to the part labeled June 30^th.

April 23: 60 days after my last period I finally take a pregnancy test. It comes out positive.

May 6-9: Brandon and I start telling family and friends that we are pregnant.

May 13: Brandon and I go meet with my Ob/Gyn and have the ten week ultrasound. Two babies show up on the monitor. We are thrilled and immediately tell family, friends, random strangers, etc.

May 16: I start spotting

May 19: I have several signs of a miscarriage; sudden heavy bleeding and passing tissue (two fetus sized round lumps) among other things. I conclude that it was a full miscarriage. Brandon and I are on vacation. I don't see any point in going to the hospital. They wouldn't be able to put the babies back in. Plus I feel fine physically so I figure I can just follow up with my doctor when we get back to Logan.

May 28: After calling my doctor's office and letting them know that I had a miscarriage all I am told is to come in for a blood test and we can go from there. I go in for the blood test which I get billed for but no one ever calls me about the results. I figure it showed that I didn't have any infection or anything like that and that everything is fine.

First two weeks of June: All of my pregnancy symptoms, except throwing up, go away. Brandon no longer smells like yucky food to me, I enjoy eating, I'm not as ornery or tired.

June 18: I go to the doctor for what I think is a miscarriage follow up exam. Instead we had the whole bizarre experience I already blogged about. He looks at my earlier blood test from May 28^th and tells me that my HCG (pregnancy hormone) levels are very high. I ask him why no one ever called me and told me. He recommends an ultrasound but I can't see the point since it is so obvious to me that I am no longer pregnant. I agree to another blood test just to get out of the office.

June 21: The blood test comes back with high HCG levels again. The doctors office starts hounding me to get an ultrasound. We are in the middle of moving from Logan to Bountiful so even if I wanted to have the ultrasound I really don't have the time.

Okay now for the story.

June 30: I'm slightly settled in Bountiful and curiosity starts to get the better of me. Also I've been hearing stories of people who had miscarriages where the placenta didn't quite detach and it kept growing or got infected. I'm a little bit of a hypochondriac so as soon as I start thinking about those stories I notice that my stomach is sometimes hard and I feel pressure there. I also have heard about cases where women were pregnant with twins and only miscarried one twin. I think this is slightly possible, but I'm not willing to think about it much. I call around and get scheduled for an ultrasound at the LDS hospital radiology department that day.

As we drive the 10 minutes to Salt Lake I am mentally preparing myself for bad news and surgery. Brandon tries to lighten the mood by telling me about the ultrasound that a nurse gave him when he was 7. This distracts me a little because neither of us can figure out why he was given an ultrasound – he was in the hospital for a stroke which shouldn't have any impact on the abdomen. We conclude it was to keep him entertained.

We get to the radiology department and get all checked in. The ultrasound technician comes out and takes us back to the examining room. I explain to her that I miscarried twins six weeks before, but that my HCG levels are still high and we'd like to know what is in me that is causing that.

She starts moving the sensor around on my belly and is quiet for a few minutes. I can see the monitor but I have no idea what I am looking at. To me it all looks like overgrown placenta, and I'm just waiting for her to tell me that she's found something bad.

Finally I can't stand the suspense and I ask her what she sees. She says, “well here is a baby with a heart beat.” I'm shocked, and I can't keep myself from asking, “what about the other one?” She tells me that she is still trying to get oriented, but seconds later she says, “and here is another baby with a heartbeat.”

And so for the second time in two months Brandon and I are staring at a monitor in shock as an ultrasound reveals that we are having twins. The size of the babies indicates that these are the same twins that I thought I had lost 6 weeks ago. Humor is my go to emotion in situations like this so I start saying things like, “poor little neglected babies.” and “wow these kids like to trick us. We are going to have to watch them extra carefully.”

The technician steps out for a moment to change the ultrasound order from a routine pelvic ultrasound to a whole body scan of the twins. Here are some pics from the ultrasound. (You can tell which baby is which by the number in the left hand side. They are designated Baby A and Baby B.

Brandon and I look at each other and just start to laugh – we can't believe what is going on. She comes back in and starts measuring everything on the babies. This is the most boring exciting thing to ever happen to me. On the one had it is really cool to see my babies, on the other hand it is incredibly tedious to sit through as she takes picture after picture of things such as the backs of their necks and their brains. Also I am mostly in shock. I keep trying to figure out how I am going to tell everyone that I am still pregnant – with twins. I keep thinking, “I am going to look like a moron. I really thought I had a miscarriage, but instead my twins are doing fine.”

The babies are far enough along that the technician says we should be able to determine the gender. She asks if we want to know. Back when we found out we were pregnant with twins the first time Brandon and I decided that we would want to know the genders. With one baby we could handle the surprise and suspense of not knowing until the baby was born, but with two babies we would need to know so we could prepare ahead of time. We tell the technician that we do want to know. (We are keeping the genders a secret for a couple weeks. My family has a tradition of holding an informal contest to guess the gender of any baby. So add a comment to the bottom of this post with what you think the genders are. In a week or so I'll post the genders.)

So that is why I will never be a doctor. Obviously I have no idea what is going on medically, though I shouldn't feel too bad. Yesterday we met with my new Ob-gyn (who I love) I asked her what she thought happened and her answer was, "I don't know, maybe you had triplets."
We've spent the last week and a half wrapping our heads around this news. Yesterday we told our parents and today we told our siblings. And now we are telling all of you. I am so excited for this unexpected miracle. And guess what. On Monday I'll be 20 weeks. Yeah that's right I'm halfway through a 40 week pregnancy. Thank you all for your love and support the last 20 weeks. Hopefully the next 20 will be a lot less eventful.