One Year Ago Today

Well, I've been asked numerous times over the last 8 months if I have a blog. I've always replied that I don't have time to maintain one. However, I'm probably never going to have more time.  Now is as good of time as any, right? So I'm gonna try to give this blogging thing a go.

Today is the one-year anniversary of when we found out we were having quadruplets. Since I am always asked how and when we found out there was four babies, today is a good day to share the story.

After finding out I was pregnant in April 2011, I had my first ultrasound at 6 1/2 weeks. We were amazed and shocked to see two placentas with one heartbeat in each. TWINS! We were super excited... and also pretty nervous, but mostly just excited! Fast forward to 10 1/2 weeks along... pregnancy has been great so far. I've felt great - still have energy and no morning sickness! As I got out of my car after work on May 20th, I felt an immediate rush of blood. As I ran up to the front door of our house, I remember thinking... "that's weird, my pants feel wet. I don't rememeber being sweaty in the car." Yeah, it wasn't sweat. My pants were "wet" all the way down to my knees. I freaked out. I called my doctor (who I was supposed to have an appointment with later that afternoon). I was told to go straight to the emergency room. I called Bill and told him what was going on. Thankfully, his work is on the way to the hospital. So I picked him up, and we hurried there. The ER doctor sent me back for an ultrasound to check the "status of the pregnancy". At the ultrasound, we immediately saw two heartbeats on the screen. So the technician went searching for where all the blood was coming from. After a few minutes, she stopped and asked "how many did they tell you were in here?" I told her two, and that there wasn't any more than that. We saw the first ultrasound. Two sacs, two heartbeats. She said "um, dear, you need to look at the screen. Here's three heartbeats - one, two, three." We were shocked. Triplets!!! After a few more minutes of searching around, she stopped again and just stared at me. I was a little worried since she wasn't saying anything... did we just lose a heartbeat? She slowly said, "I need you to look at the screen again. This is number four." I was already an emotional wreck from everything I'd already experienced that day... the thought of miscarrying twins to having triplets to having quadruplets. So needless to say, I just cried and cried. Happiness that my babies were okay and that there were four of them, but also mourning the loss of the normal pregnancy I had planned on having. Bill, however, simply stood next to me and kept repeating over and over "I just don't understand how this is possible." As it turns out, there was only two placentas in there... but one of them had identical triplets in it. Identical triplets are extremely rare (1 in every 500,000 births)... but even more rare than that was our "3+1" pregnancy. We were told that there are less than 70 recorded cases of this happening in the United States. Ever. Wow.

So there it was... what could have been one of the worst days of my life turned out to be one of the most exciting. I thought I was miscarrying our TWINS, but my body was simply having a complication from being pregnant with QUADRUPLETS. And so the craziness began.