I’ve had 3 healthy singleton pregnancies in the last 7 years and they’ve all been relatively the same. But everything from finding out we were having twins to twin delivery has been a totally different world.
So I’m gonna share a few things I didn’t know about twin pregnancies until I was pregnant with them, and how they can differ…
You get HUGE
Twin pregnancy is everything you hear about and more. You know you’re gonna get big, but you get HUGE. By the time you’re 6 months you think you’re as big as you can get but you only get bigger and more uncomfortable. Your stomach will feel like a rock before you’re even close to the end because you’re at max capacity. It gets hard to breath just standing still or sitting down doing nothing. I am only 30 weeks writing this, with 8 weeks to go, and I’ve never been so uncomfortable in my life. I wasn’t even this uncomfortable at the very end of my other pregnancies. There is absolutely no room in there with two babies and two placentas, period.
“Singleton”
I found out that becoming a twin mom meant learning a new set of vocabulary of words. You may have already read some of my blogs and seen the word “singleton” and maybe you’ve put the pieces together… but if you haven’t, a singleton baby is exactly what it sounds like, a single baby during pregnancy. I always knew twins or more were “multiples”, but never that single baby pregnancies were called “singleton.” Now the word “singleton” is just another word I use in casual conversation, forgetting that most people don’t even know what it means lol
Prenatal visits
Prenatal visits with twins are slightly different from singleton visits. You can expect ultrasounds, ultrasounds, and more ultrasounds… because with twins, you get an ultrasound with every prenatal visit. That’s like 10-12 ultrasounds vs the 2-3 you get with a healthy singleton pregnancy.
Twin chorionicity in the womb
I hadn’t put much thought into how twins were “hanging out” in a mothers womb before I became a mother to twins. I guess I just assumed they were in there just like every other baby… in the sac that holds the baby with a single placenta to give them nutrients, but instead of one baby there were two, simple right? Wrong. Twins actually have several different ways they can “hang out” in there.
The basics to know are that babies grow in amniotic sacs, and placentas give the babies all the oxygen and nutrients they need. Twins chroionicity tells how your twins were formed by how many sacs and placenta are present.
(Sticking to abbreviations so I don’t confuse you more than it already is lol) Di/Di twins (this is what my twins are) are in separate sacs with their own placentas, Mo/Di twins are in separate sacs but share a placenta, and Mo/Mo twins share a sac and share a placenta. I don’t think there’s anything that blew my mind more about twin pregnancy than this.
Knowing the chorionicity of twins helps your doctor decide how high risk your pregnancy is, and the proper prenatal care needed. Di/Di twins are generally less likely to have any additional risks because they have their own placentas, whereas Mo/Di and Mo/Mo twins should be monitored more carefully because they are at an increased risk for complications like twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (one twin takes all the nutrients from the other) and other complications.
Baby A, or Baby B?
What determines which baby gets the name “baby A” and which gets the name “baby B” and how do they not get them confused!? Turns out, whichever baby is closest to the birth canal is labeled “baby A” because this baby is most likely to come out first.
Finding out twin gender using the blood test
The blood work you get when you’re about 12 weeks pregnant to test for abnormalities in the baby can also tell the gender of the baby, but with twins it’s not always that easy. What the test does is detects if there is a Y chromosome present, but not how many. So essentially if you’re having twins and your test come back positive for Y chromosome, you know there is at least one boy but can’t say for sure if it’s one boy or two boys. The only way to know gender definitively with a blood test for twins is if the test doesn’t show a Y chromosome at all, because then that means there are zero Y chromosomes present and you for sure only have girls.
Genetics
I’ve always heard that twins run in families. While this is true for fraternal twins, it is not for identical twins. Unless you are having twins due to medical intervention, a woman has to carry a special gene that causes her to hyper ovulate causing her to release more than one egg at a time. And this is how fraternal twins are created, when two separate eggs are fertilized. Fraternal twins will have their own DNA… in fact, their DNA is no more similar than siblings born years apart.
Identical twins on the other hand, are not genetic and happen completely by chance. Identical twins come from the same, single, fertilized egg which gives them the same DNA. For twins to be identical, a single embryo has to split in two soon after fertilization, and this could happen for any woman. Identical twins share the same DNA.
Fun fact: even though my twins are Di/Di (in separate sac and have separate placentas which would assume they’ll be fraternal) there is still a 30% chance that my twins could have split very early and they could still be identical.
Full term at 37-38 weeks
Singleton pregnancies are full term at 40 weeks, while twins are considered full term at 37-38 weeks. Studies show that after 38 weeks the risk of still born or infant deaths go up significantly for twins.
Delivery
It’s common practice to have twins delivered in the operating room and not in a standard room, even if you’re delivering vaginally. This way you are prepped and ready in case of an emergency because c-section is so common in twin delivery.