How Many Are There?

A few hours passed before I mustered up the courage to call Kevin back and tell him what else the nurse had said. 

“Jackie said that my hormones were really high,” I said, building up to the unknown.

Kevin laughed, “That's good! That means that the embryos really took, right?”

“Mmmm hmmm. In fact, she said that when we go in next week for the first ultrasound, she wants to count how many fetus' that we have now.”

A swing and a pitch.

Delay. “What does that mean? You just said that they both took. They know that. Why do they want to count them?” “Wellllll.... she said that sometimes the embryos can split once they are implanted.”

“WHAT?”

“Yup.” I snicker a little.

I hear his calculator clicking. “What are you doing?” I ask. Just making sure that he comprehended what I have just told him.

“We can't afford triplets.”

“Huh?” We have spent a fortune just to get to this point so “afford” was long passed on the side of the road of life.

“If we have three babies at one time, a reasonable daycare quote will be (more clicking) nearly $400 a WEEK, we will have to buy a bigger vehicle, we have to buy three cribs, three car seats, three vehicles when they turn 16, three college tuitions, three.....” WHOA THERE BUCKAROO!!!!

“Kevin, they are not sure. How about we wait and see what the ultrasound says?” I admit, I was a little panicky about the thought of more than two babies, but in the words of my cousin, “We takes what the good Lord gives us.” 

Kevin is most definitely the one who keeps his wits about him in all situations, so I was having to fake serenity to bring Kevin back down to earth. We decided that we would not get ahead of ourselves and that we would just wait until the ultrasound told us what we were working with. It was a long week. In the words of Tom Petty, “The waiting is the hardest part.”

The next Tuesday, we held clammy, cold hands as we walked into the doctor's office for the official head count. I had already started wearing untucked, oversized shirts so that I would “look more pregnant”. Little did I know how huge I would get. 

The nice ultrasound tech came in all smiles, wheeling in her ultrasound machine. The teller of fortunes.

“Let's see who's in there,” she said. It looked like static on her screen. Then I heard it. Shomp, shomp, shomp, shomp. The heartbeat. Far too fast to be my own. “Do they have heartbeats already?” I asked. Duh. What is that I am hearing? 

“Yes, babies develop hearts in week 4 of gestation. You are at week 6 so the hearts are pumping great!”

She points to the screen. “So here's Baby A.” That is the most beautiful black-eyed pea looking thing on the screen that I have ever seen!

She points to a different part of the screen, “And there's Baby B”. Another beautiful black-eyed pea!!

She looks around some more. Kevin's grip is distinctly tighter than before. We patiently, silently wait while she checks every crevice of my uterus (now that's something I never thought I would write). “Aaaaand....that's all folks! Two beautiful babies! Congratulations.”

I am pretty sure that I heard Kevin exhale in relief. I was focused on the two beautiful black-eyed peas that I didn't care about anything else.