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Tag Archives: Twins

Fraternal or Identical

27 Thursday Feb 2014

Posted by Stefanie Van Aken (RSMLVTravel) in Featured

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

family, Twins

March 11, 2010 changed our lives in a way we never imagined. Not only was it the same day my grandfather passed away, but it was also the same day we learned that our third pregnancy was about about to produce 2 babies. That’s right, we were put on notice that our one last baby we planned to have before I turned 35, was indeed, going to be our last TWO babies. Thus, growing our family of 4 into 6 in a matter of a few short months. I’m not going to lie, I cried for about a month after learning this news. For many reasons, but mainly because I was scared. It was about to rock my world. Change everything I knew about being a mother, and a human being functioning on this planet. No more coffee with the girls. No more meeting my husband for cocktails in the middle of the week after work. No more full time job outside the house. No more traveling. No more anything! I had convinced myself being a mother of 4, let alone a set of twins, was going to be a house-arrest punishment until they left for college.

Twin Boys

Further more, I knew absolutely nothing about twins. When I was younger and my friends and I would talk about how many kids we would want, at least 1 to 2 of them would say that they really hoped for twins. Those words never came out of mouth. In fact, I couldn’t understand for the life of me why they would want more than one baby at a time. During those times, I knew I wanted many children. Four was my strive for, but I would settle for two. My husband and I convinced ourselves that three was the new two, so we decided to go for it. And, I had been known to say, if it wasn’t for having to have a c-section every time, I would have gone for 4 kids, but instead, I would settle for three not wanting to undergo major surgery for a fourth time. God took me literally, and granted my childhood wish of having four babies, and was lucky enough to only have three c-sections.

Twin_bros

I joke, but deep down inside, and even now, three and half years later, I know I am blessed. Beyond control. I could never express the amount of gratitude I have for being given the life experience of conceiving, carrying, birthing and raising twins. I also love that my family gets to experience in this unique opportunity as well. Sounds like a marketing scheme, I know, but truly, what a way to add abundance to your life. When my husband and I were told about the twins, it had already been 9 weeks into my pregnancy. At the ultra-sound, the pictures showed two eggs, with their own amniotic sack and placenta, thriving. At that point, there was no way to tell how these little creatures came into existence. My naivety forced me to believe they were fraternal since they had separate sacks and placentas. This seemed logical to me. Come to find out, this is not necessarily true. The safest way to carry twins is for them to have their own, completely separate, amniotic sack and placenta, however, it is often not the case. And, in this instance, it doesn’t always mean the twins are automatically fraternal. There is still a 20-25% chance the twins can be identical.

Baby A Baby B

As you can see, there was a lot of uncertainty happening during our pregnancy. As we got further along, we made the decision to determine the sex of the babies. Having twins was surprise enough, we needed to have something that felt tangible in all of this. Haha- if only that was the case. At 20 weeks, our OB/GYN who confirmed the sex of our other two children said, “Baby A 100% boy, Baby B 80% sure its a girl.” We were elated! How fantastic that we would have two boys and two girls. My daughter would have a sister, and my son a younger brother. Over the moon we were, until we went for the official ultra-sound to measure the babies and confirm their sex. The announcement that both babies would be boys put us into an even further tailspin. We just were not prepared, it seemed, during this entire pregnancy.

BabyA_BabyB

Even amongst the chaos, there were some beautiful moments. Shortly after the discovery of twins, I was diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum, a condition causing extreme, persistent nausea and vomiting during pregnancy that can lead to dehydration. I was hospitalized for three days. Once out of the hospital, however, my pregnancy was very healthy. In fact, I carried my boys until they were 37 weeks. At which this time, the only reason to deliver them was that they had grown too big and there was just no more room for them to cohabitate in a safe environment. At birth, they weighed 6.5lbs and 6lbs, and did not have to spend anytime in the NICU. Also, upon discovering Baby B was in fact, a boy, my husband and I made the decision right away to name him Hugh, after my grandfather. I always think my grandpa was giving my Baby B a “high-5” that day, one leaving heaven, and the other on his way up. The personalty of Baby B has suited his namesake perfectly.

Going back to my lack of knowledge about twins, I still couldn’t understand how all of this could have happened. There are twins in our family, on both my husband’s side and mine. But, the relations were distant, nothing immediate. For the record, our twins were spontaneous, if you couldn’t tell by now, nothing to enhance our chances of conceiving, at least not intentionally. The other doozy- fraternal twins can be hereditary, but identical twins are nature’s “oops”. Being the realist that I am, I needed to make some sort of sense of all of this. The first thing that came to mind was the fact that I had been using an IUD (intrauterine device) since my daughter was born, 4 years ago. Out of curiosity, I Googled, “Mirena and multiple births,”. The results were astonishing. Apparently, this is a thing. Of course, I’m not saying if you want twins to have your IUD removed and try to conceive right away. In fact, I had been told the complete opposite, starting with, I shouldn’t use an IUD unless I wasn’t planning on having anymore babies. Or, that it could take up to a year to conceive once the IUD was removed. Apparently, God not only works in mysterious ways, but he also has a great sense of humor.

In case you are like me, and know almost nothing about twins, here are some interesting tidbits: (information courtesy of Wikipedia.com)

    • Zygosity: the degree of identity in genome twins
      • Dizygotic = Fraternal
      • Monozygotic = Identical
    • There are 5 common variations of twinning:
      • The three most common variations are all dizygotic (fraternal):
        • Male–female twins are the most common result, 50 percent of dizygotic twins and the most common grouping of twins.
        • Female–female dizygotic twins (sometimes called “sororal twins”)
        • Male–male dizygotic twins
    • The other two variations are monozygotic (“identical”) twins:
        • Female–female monozygotic twins
        • Male–male monozygotic twins (less common)

Twins Collage

It is not a super important thing for us to know if our twins were identical or fraternal. Of course, we are asked like 1,000 times a day. And, truthfully, the only real reason we would want to know would be for medical reasons or issues that might come up in the future. As of now, they are very healthy, intelligent, thriving little 3-year old boys. But alas, curiosity got the best of us. From several trusted recommendations, we went online to a genetics lab and had a DNA swab test kit sent out to us via snail mail. Before bed time, and the next morning before they ate breakfast, I took the cotton swabs determined for each boy, swiped the inside of their cheeks as directed, placed them in the test tube, and sent them on their way. Now, this company claims their results are 99.9% accurate. I’m the kind of person who bought 5 different brands of pregnancy tests to make sure one was not faulty or to confirm their accuracy. But, I’m trusting my instincts on this one, and in turn, trust the company I used. Two weeks later, the results are in…

 identical

Crazy exciting isn’t it? Well, it is for us. Admittedly, this does bring about some sense of satisfaction to know our boys are identical. And, to know the instance of having identical twin boys, who incubated in their own amniotic sack and placentas, and born at a healthy weight is pretty rare, confirms that these guys were our own little miracles. An absolutely amazing event to happen in our lives. Thanks for taking the journey with us!

You can follow along with us on Instagram search for #Twincapades.

Twinners: Two of Everything?

26 Tuesday Jul 2011

Posted by Stefanie Van Aken (RSMLVTravel) in Archive It

≈ Leave a Comment

Tags

Double, Gear for multiples, Multiples, Twins, Two of everything

It’s funny how things change.  When my son was born, I couldn’t have been more of a rookie.  Shopping for baby stuff was like being given an AmEx card with no limit and an all access pass to Babies R Us.  I wanted everything, I needed everything, I mean, the baby needed everything.  Bouncy seats, pack-n-plays, swings, highchairs?  We’ll take two…one for upstairs one for downstairs… Strollers?  We’ll take like 7…one for every occassion.  Bottles, wipe warmers, diaper bags, binkies in every size, brand, color, and binky holders to go with them.  Onsies?  He might need like 1000…just in case he spits up or poops.  When you walked into our house post-birth of baby, you would have thought we had multiple children living there. This child was well entertained.  He had every contraption known to man kind and several costume changes a day.

Two years later, my daughter was born.  You heard me, right?  Daughter.  Not only was she my daughter, but she also just happened to be the only girl born on my side of the family to a growing generation of boys-only.  Naturally, we aquired even more stuff.  The same stuff my son had, but this time in pink.  Lucky for me, I had lots of nephews, so I could pass on some of that stuff to keep our dignity in tact.

Four years passed before we even thought of having anymore babies.  So we slowly started giving things away, holding on to a few items here and there.  When we found out we were having twins, two out of three doctors I had visited insisted they were boy/girl.  And, I wanted to believe that so badly because I wanted another girl.  My mom and I sifted through all of the baby things I had taken back and collected for the last few months.  I was starting to get a sense of “Oh My God this is a lot of shit.”  Pardon my French, but you know, that overwhelming feeling occurs quite a bit when you find out you are having twins, and really, there’s not too many words that can describe it.  We had to keep everything…pink and blue, girl and boy…well, I guess we didn’t have to keep everything, I could have chosen to say “F-it” and dress my baby girl in an androgynous manner, but I can’t help it, I like gender specific!  I’ll pay for their therapy later.  Anyhow, though I was pretty sad, OK, devastated, when we found out they were boy/boy, I was actually kind of grateful I could start getting rid of stuff!

Cool items that come in a pair

With that being said, I’m a closet hoarder when it comes to my baby’s things.  I love momentos and keepsakes.  I have lots of little boxes and big boxes of their diaper size, cap, onsie and blanket they wore in the hospital, along with their hospital bracelets, lock of hair, foot prints, shower favors, invites, Welcome to the World cards…you name it, I have it saved.  I was also really looking forward to dressing that baby girl up again…just like I did, and do, her big sister.  It was a tear jerking moment sitting on the floor with one of my BFFs deciding on what to hand down to her little girl.  I was glad to see someone get use out of it, but I cried the whole time.  That’s why she’s my friend…the whole time she sat there telling me she knows how hard it is to go through that instead of judging me to be a nut-bag.  Isn’t she great?!?!

After a bit of purging, it started to feel pretty good.  I was shedding things.  Moving on from one chapter to another.  It wasn’t easy, but it had to be done, and it was freeing once I did it.  That jump started a whole revolution for me.  From that point forward, I refused to take more than I needed.  I refused to have a house full of baby stations.  Sure, they would need a few things, but did they really need everything?  I mean, how many times can a kid bounce or exercise at such a young age?  And isn’t the goal to actually hold them??  My sister did convince me to take two swings, which I’m glad I did.  And, we do have two exesaucers, two jumparoos, two high chairs, and two baby seats.  Minus the jumparoos and the exersaucers, we kind of needed two of the other things.  And, so far, it’s worked out.  I get compliments all the time about how my house doesn’t look like a baby playground…I guess that’s what people are expecting walking into a Twinners house.  Although, they couldn’t say that now, especially with them crawling, there are gates and stand-up toys all over the place.  But, I did learn from having babies all over again.

Jammies, Socks and Burpies...all two by two!

So the common question, “Do you need two of everything?” remains…and my answer is, yes, but in moderation.

  • Think about what you will need.  It’s hard to predict their personalities before you have the babies, so if you can borrow items first, do it!  If not, check the return policy from where you bough the items, and try one at a time before tearing the boxes open and discovering the babies are not interested.  For example, Baby A hates the jumperoo.  Baby B loves it.  Baby A loves the exersaucer, Baby B couldn’t really care less if he’s in there or in the jumperoo.  Solution: Keep one of each.
  • If you have an upstairs and a downstairs, you might want to consider doubles of certain things like bouncy seats, or a pack-n-play.  Multiple changing stations are a must, so you definitely want doubles of things like diaper pails and baskets to hold wipes, creams, diapers, lotions, brushes, etc.
  • Things like highchairs, car seats and strollers are a no-brainer.   Of course, you’ll need one for each baby, but shop these with growth in mind to help you save in the long run.  Like buying highchairs with a recline for infants that change into toddler seats you can push up to the dinner table or counter later on.
  • Cool thing about multiples?  A lot of items come in packages of two!  The little feeder nets, some pacifiers, bibs, onsies, pajamas, socks, spoons, burpcloths…those kind of things, sure you can buy an extra package for back-up, but I have found that I only use what I need, and I don’t need a ton of excess lying around.  Even bottles that come in packs of 2 or 4, yeah, you’ll have to buy a few of those, but you’ll wash them and use them again.  I think we have a total of 14 bottles.  I always scour the baby department in Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart…wherever I am, to see if any of the items packaged in 2 are on sale.
As they are getting older and starting to be more aware of what’s going on, I notice that I do have to buy two of the same toys…that is for my own sanity.  At 10 months old, they already fight over who has what.  And, retailers have become less sympathetic to parents with multiples because the IVF boom (much love to my IVF friends) has made multiples not as rare as they once were.  I always ask for a multiples discount*, usually to be scoffed at, but it’s worth a shot.  Seriously, I have to buy TWO of your designer highchair covers for $80 a pop and you have no room in your heart for even 10% off?!?!  (I didn’t buy them, BTW…I waited for the same exact ones to go on BabySteals and scored them for half off!  Booya and your no-multiples-discount-having-attitude!)  Nowadays, having to buy for two is a stretch…so it’s best to stretch that dollar as far as it will go, and stretch your imagination.  What I have discovered is that babies don’t really need that much.  (I know, mom, you told me so.)  And, I’m much happier without having all that extra crap around!  You can make it work on your budget, have room in your house to walk, and have happy babies.  You just have to change your perspective a little bit is all!
Check out my twins playing with  a clean diaper…see what I mean about needing two of the same toys?!?!

*There are still plenty of companies out there that participate in multiples discounts.  You usually have to call or write a request, and sometimes they will ask for birth certificates.  They may not be as generous as they once were. Babies R Us is actually pretty generous with their discounts, you just have to do some leg work on your part.

Twinners: The Battle of the Green Tub Toy

25 Monday Jul 2011

Posted by Stefanie Van Aken (RSMLVTravel) in Archive It

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Tags

Toys, Tub, Twins

Watch those boys take a stab at winning over the green tub toy.

The Battle of the Green Tub Toy

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