Psychology of a Twin Pregnancy

If you are ever pregnant with twins, the FIRST thing you will notice is the apparent doom and gloom associated with it. Words like bedrest, pre-term labor, twin to twin transfusion syndrome, Intra Uterine Growth Restriction, placental abruption, pre-eclampsia...all become commonplace vocabulary. Every book, internet site, article and doctor you encounter will warn you of all of these risks and leave you believing that you'll be lucky to still have two live babies at the end of it all.

You anxiously count down the weeks to viability (24 weeks), worry and jump at every little thing and read, read, read...and go back and read it all again.

You find yourself praying prayers you had never once dreamed of:

"Dear Lord, please do not let one of my babies die. Please do not let me have to carry around a dead baby for months for the sake of the live one..."

And you chug along, half terrified because that's all you've been told to expect.

And somehow, you find yourself pretty far along. And you are HUGE. Uncomfortable. Everything hurts. You don't know just how much more you can take. Tasks once considered simple...loading the dishwasher, sweeping the floor, sleeping, breathing...are now painful. Oh, and there's still at least six weeks to go! Every night as you crawl into bed, you secretly celebrate having made it through just one more day of misery.

This is where you find yourself no longer worrying so much about not making it to term...now you worry about going the whole FORTY WEEKS!!! All you want is to be over and done with this...as soon as is feasible of course. You just want time to speed up so that you can have some semblance of your former self back. The thought of being that 1% that makes it to forty weeks sounds like Chinese water torture...

And then, one day, well into viability, yet too soon to avoid NICU time, you start to feel the beginnings of labor. And you feel so guilty for wishing you could be done. So you lay around like a bump on a log always expecting that tell-tale gush of water...knowing that rather than relief, you will only feel desparation and guilt at your feelings just a few days earlier.

Moral of the story: this is tough.