Your Twin Pregnancy Questions Answered!

Since we publicly shared the news of my pregnancy a few weeks ago there have been so many questions from friends, family, coworkers, and even tangential acquaintances (i.e. hello Pilates instructor  instructor?) When I put a Q&A on Instagram the questions were … interesting.  Some I have answered below but rephrased the questions to be a little less crude.  Here are the top 10 most asked twin pregnancy questions:

Do twins run in your family?  No, twins do not run in either Mark nor my family so it was quite a surprise.

Are they identical?  No, they are not.  Medically speaking they are dichorionic diamniotic or DCDA twins.  Medically speaking means that each baby has their own separate placenta with its own separate inner membrane (amnion) and outer membrane (chorion). I think this graphic does a good job visualizing it but essentially two completely separate babies that just happen to be in there at the same time!

Do you know the gender?  We do! We did a gender reveal which I will share in a separate post but as a sneak peak – there is going to be a lot of pink in our lives.

Was it IVF?   The first time someone asked me this question I was a bit shocked but now that it has happened half a dozen times, I am used to it. I have realized this question about in vitro fertilisation (IVF) is not necessarily asking if I was having fertility problems but is because with IVF the chance of twins is 12% versus 0.4% naturally.  The answer is no, the babies were conceived naturally.

Are you having the babies in the US or in England?  There were a lot of questions around this topic, phrased in many different ways like, “When are you moving back to America?”.  The short answer the babies will be born in London.  As it is twins I can not fly after my 32 week and I do not have health insurance in the United States to name just two of many reasons – plus this is where we live!

Are you excited?  Excited, overwhelmed, scared, joyous, nervous – pretty much all of the emotions.

Where you trying to conceive?  We have always known we wanted a family and after our October wedding knew we were ready to start trying. So the answer, we were not, not trying.

How did you surprise your hubby / family?   In so many ways.  I tried to be creative and we told people in many different ways whether it was in person versus video calls.  A full post is coming on this as well!

Where are you now?   I think this question means how far along am I in my pregnancy?  Wednesday marked 19 weeks as my due date is end of August and each baby is now the size of a mango.

Have you thought about names? We have but are no where near deciding – we have a list of about 20 we like.

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If you have other burning twin pregnancy questions drop them in the comments and I will do a part two, follow up post if there are enough of them.  And thank you agin for all of the well wishes – our baby girls are already very loved!