Twin's Club 2! All Welcome! :)

[holidays2010]

Continued on from Here
Tried to update best I can with limited info and time, but here's the list on the new Twins Club thread, please update if I've missed anything!

Sassy34264 #2&3 EDD 12/09/10, Lancs, Jacob and Isobel born 13/8/10
strawberrylace #2&3 EDD 1/12/10, Suffolk, surprise Zoey and Lucas born 23/10/10 by c section
jjkm #1&2 ADD 29/1/11, outside the UK, Girls born 25/10/10
Lavitabellissima #1&2 EDD 13/12/10, SW London, Identical girls Born 04/11/10 c section (early 34&3)
smokeybacon #3&4 EDD 25th Nov, Nottingham, Freddie and Tobias born 06/11/10, natural birth after induction.
Jenzopos #1&2 EDD 23/11/10, Charlotte & Anna, Manchester 15/11/10 6lb 7oz and 7lb 5oz
Swazzee #1&2 EDD 02/12/10, South London, Adem 6lb 3oz and Rafi 5lb 13oz 21/11/10
Amberc #2&3, Madeleine (6.3lb) & Isabella (6.11lb) , delivered by C Section on 07/1/11 at 37 weeks, Kent
Thingamajig #2&3 EDD 20/3/11, Cornwall, identical girls Hannah (5lb4oz) and Louise (4lb4oz) born 13/2/11
Magic8ballhastheanswers #3&4 EDD 22/3/11 South London, ID girls born 27/2/11
Cerubina #1&2, SW London, Sebastian (3lb 4oz) and Rosamund (3lb 9oz) born 8 weeks early on 26/2/11 by emergency c-section
Holidays2010, 2 Baby Boys born 06/03/2011
CantDrinkAnyMoreMilk, Scotland, Baby Girl and Baby Boy born 01/03/2011
crazydayz, Thomas and Isobel, born on 28/4/2011 by C-section at 7lb 3 and 6lb 14

Tabbycat76 #1+2 Edd 21/02/11, Suffolk, surprise
VictoriaSecrets #1&2, EDD 17/05/11, Basingstoke, Prob Non-ID twin girls!

Snowfalls108 #2&3 EDD 29/05/2011, SW London, ID surprise
MissyMolly #1&2, EDD 29/05/2011, Midlands, non ID boy and girl
RestingKitty #1&2 EDD 15/06/2011, South London, boy & girl
Propercrimbo #2&3 EDD 16/07/11, North Lancs, not finding out
Brassicababe #1&2, 22/07/2011, Lincs, non-id, surprise
MorningsMadness #2&3 EDD 14/08/2011, Surrey, Non-ID twin girls
MrsStevo, #1 & 2, EDD 23/08/2011, Lincs, MCDA ID
Redshaw, EDD Sept 2011, MCDA ID
Tiggersreturn #2+3 EDD 26/09/11 NW London DCDA - not finding out
DoubleDiffedDachs, #1&2 EDD 5/10/11, Twyford (Berks), DCDA, too early to tell!
Fluter, EDD October 2011, Non-ID
PeelingmyselfofftheCeiling #1+2 EDD ... , DCDA
mybootsaremuddy 6+7 EDD 7/7/2011, surprise
silverangel #1+2 EDD ..., ID

Well, my understanding is that with identical twins they are either:
Mono-chorionic, Diamniotic (MCDA) - sharing a chorion / membrane and placenta but in separate amniotic sacs (so can't physically touch each other)
Mono-choronic, Monoamniotic (MCMA) - sharing a chorion, placenta and an amniotic sac - meaning they can swim around next to each other.
Di-chorinic, Diamniotic (DCDA) - not sharing anything (aside from your belly!)

Sounds to me like yours are either MCDA or MCMA - have they written either of these abbreviations in your notes? By 'sac' - he could have been referring to the choronic sac rather than the amniotic.

In terms of riskiness - MCMA are the most 'risky' I believe as they can intertwine their umbilical cord and get in a tangle. MCDA are next because they share a placenta therefore at risk of Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome / TTTS (same for MCMA) and DCDA come in third (don't know much about them I'm afraid).

I hope that helps clarify the differences for you - took me aggggges to get my head round it!

Mine are MCDA and I was scanned every 2 weeks from 11 weeks - I was told I was having twins at a 7 week scan. The twins then developed TTTS at 20 weeks so, after surgery, I have been scanned every week (I'm now 32 weeks). It is totally normal for them to keep a super-close eye on you so don't be freaked out by that. If you're anything like me you'll have an enormous list of stuff to ask your consultant / midwife next time you see them!

My only other advice would be to STAY AWAY FROM DR GOOGLE!! It is a NIGHTMARE as you can guarantee you'll find someone, somewhere who has been in the same situation as you and had a hideous experience so you'll become super paranoid about every twinge. Mumsnet has kept me sane during some very dark times as you actually get to 'speak' to REAL people not scary statistics on websites that are probably made up anyway!

Oh bless you quempin! Bet you're exhausted today. It can be a fretful experience carrying twins - particularly identical ones - but I'm sure you'll get excellent care and careful monitoring. Let us knw how you get on with speaking to your Dr / MW.

Congratulations restingkitty.

Well Christina and Quentin will be 4 wks tomorrow(where did the time go). Chrissy finaly gave up the fight for 2hrly feeds which means more sleep all round[relief emoticon](although she does still wake 2/3times a night).
Their little personalities are starting to show. Chrissy is definately 'little miss drama queen' everything is a disaster as far as shes concerned and shes not affraid to let the whole farm know that she is not amussed
Quinn on the other hand is Mr 'im so chilled you could drop a bomb and it wont phase me' as long as hes been fed hes happy just mooching on the mat or in the rocker or sleeping where ever when ever. Im convinced if it wasnt for Chrissy somtimes waking him up in the night hed pretty much go right through(its usualy the 4am 'chrissy alarm' that does it), although MW advised to wake him too feed him if he dosent wake naturaly as they are both quite small and need 'bulking' up a bit. Im a bit about this and not convinced as all my dc have been small and never caught up till they were about 4-5yrs, Id much rather they get a decent amount of sleep and im sure if he was hungry and wanted feeding he'd let me know. Often even if he has been woken he will just have a few sucks then unlatches and falls asleep anyway so im reluctant to wake him. As fantastic and helpfull as MW can be i just feel that somtimes MUM realy does know best................. after all u can lead a horse to water but u cant make it drink

Hope everyone else is doing ok x

Great news quempin!! MCDA are the best kind of twins if you ask me hope you got a better night's sleep last night!

Lovely to hear from you myboots and re-assuring that you have found time to post with 4 week old babies!!! Your little ones sounds adorable - love that Chrissy has got a 'drama queen' personality! I quite agree with what you said - sounds like mum deffo knows best in this instance. :)

Hello everyone! Someone told me recently (when i was feeling huge, tired and unbalanced) "Only very special people are given twins." It made me smile that day. Its very encouraging reading all of your comments. I am new here so I will introduce myself. I am 40 y.o and we are 20 weeks (tomorrow). It feels good to be at the half way point especially as I was put on bedrest from week 6 to week 12 due to unexplained bleeding. It was very scary but everything cleared up in week 13 and we have been clear sailing and growing like crazy since then so I feel very blessed. We are expecting a boy and a girl and they have already booked me in for a c-section at week 38. This whole experience has taught me 1) You never know what life is going to put in front of you. Dont try to control it. Embrace it and 2) Get the best medical advice you can find, but also go with your gut. 3) My body is changing daily and from a physical perspective I should have probably had these babies about 10 years ago! 4) None of my friends who had singletons actually understand the joy and anxiety around growing multiple people inside you. Nice to join the group and vent a little. I am happily tired everyday that I have blessed with multiples

Hello Rockwell - nice to have more company as it was getting a little quiet on here!

Love the twin personalities myboots - priceless!

MrsS or anyone - do you know what full term really is for twins??? I thought I was pretty assured of July babies, will be 34 wks on Sun, but got a section date early August as they 'couldn't possibly risk 37 wks +3/4 in case there was anything wrong! I was so upset (hormones) and frustrated and keep hearing 37wks is term so any date after that is fine. Given I am wrecked with pains, BH, spd, etc, etc already I just don't feel I can make it that far - oh, no painkillers except para as I'm allergic to codeine too, wonderful. I met a Mum today who said she had section at 37+1 and the +1 nearly killed her - she's a doctor too!
So, what is your experience?

Hi Rockwell - welcome to our very special twin group! Congrats on (very nearly almost!) reaching 20 weeks - a fab milestone - and, in fact, you're probably over halfway already actually.

Which leads me on to Mornings question..... which I don't know the answer to! All the info I've read says that twins are full term at 37 weeks, trips are 35 etc. I am 32 + 2 and still haven't been given my CS date (although am hoping to get it tomorrow) - but, given all our complications, I have been told I can't go past 36 weeks. Sorry to hear you are feeling so wrecked already but just focus on how much more healthy your babies will be for staying cooking a bit longer. Without meaning to sound preachy in any way, I would give anything to keep my babies inside me until 38 weeks as I know they are going to have to spend a lot of time in SCBU when they arrive :( To be fair though, you might go into labour naturally before then! Get cracking on the raspberry leaf tea, pineapples and curry now!!

Congratulations RestingKitty glad you're all doing well.

Morning madness I was told at my 1st appt before they knew if they were DCDA or MCDA that DCDA full term is 37 weeks and I wouldn't be allowed to go past it because of type 1 diabetes and if MCDA I'd be lucky to get to 35. I assumed from that that they'd be healthy if removed at 37 weeks but that they'd let non-diabetics go to at least 38 weeks (given that I was induced for ds at 39 weeks and normal singleton pgs go to 40-42 weeks. I know another hospital does 39 weeks for dcda with no other complications.

They won't discuss or fix method of birth until 32-34 weeks though.

We just came back from a week in Spain which was great. Amazingly I didn't get asked for any medical letters (which I had) either going or coming back (26-27 weeks). Very odd but nice. Hope everyone's doing well.

Thanks ladies - MrsS, reality check for me, feeling ready to burst is nothing in comparison and I do know that, really. You've been so positive when I just let myself get so down over nothing - slaps self.

Hi everyone and welcome to the newbies:)

Everyrthing I have read says twins are considered term at 37 weeks but I rthink a lot depends on hospital policy and type of twins. My hospital will not deliver me past 35 weeks (MCDA and had TTTS), before the problems they said 34-36 and always by section. They will let DCDA deliver naturally as long as twin 1 is in the right position. Quempin do you know what sort of twins you have?

Tigger - glad you had a good break, I would have loved to get a week away but with the TTTS didn't feel we could risk it (27 weeks now) and dh a teacher so wouldn't be able to go for another couple of weeks! I'm signed off work now with pgp so hoping the sunshine comes back here:)

Mrs S - hope scan on Friday was ok?

Hope everyone has a good weekend x

Evening ladies!

My scan yesterday went pretty well. The babies were VERY wriggly though so it was hard for the sonographer to do the dopplers properly! But dopplers looked good on both babies, fluid has balanced out to around 6cm each and the one that had a dilated brain ventricle last week now doesn't BUT the other one's ventricle is now on the high end of normal .... but ultimately that still means normal! Had a long conversation with my consultant afterwards and he now wants me to be scanned twice a week (every 3-4 days) to keep an eye on dopplers. This is because the bigger twin's growth had slowed down a lot at last week's scan and the next growth scan is next Friday. He said that if the baby's growth tails off even more next week then he would probably look to deliver them next weekend. But he would weigh the growth up against the doppler measurements and fluid levels and make the decision based on that as he said growth isn't the only indicator of them thriving / not thriving. He said he is just trying to 'buy' a bit more time of them being inside as he wants them to be as developed as poss when they arrive. BUT he said that, whatever happens, they wouldn't go past 36 weeks which is 26th July so I am having my babies THIS MONTH!!!!!

I have to say that I left the hospital pretty much on cloud 9! I know our babies are still only 32 + 4 and, if they were delivered next week, they would be in SCBU for ages, but it just feels as though we are finally reaching the end of this LONG road. I can't believe that this time next month I won't be pregnant anymore and will actually have my babies!!!!

Anyway, hope you're all ok! quempin - I think each hospital has it's own policy about delivery of twins but I believe over 50% of all twins are delivered by CS in the end. With MCDA twins, like yours, there is the risk of them developing acute TTTS in labour so that is a factor you would have to weigh up if you wanted a "normal" birth. But I don't think you'll have any problem if you want a CS so just ask for one and see what the midwife / consultant says.

Sorry to hear you've been signed off now silver, hope you're not in too much pain / discomfort, but I also hope the sun comes out and you can bask in it!!

Off to bed now ..... I'm exxxxhausted!

Silver - I did have a few weeks of wibbles over going and actually booked it at 8 weeks before I knew if they were MCDA or DCDA but took out travel insurance and figured then that if there was a problem I'd just claim on it and send dh and ds alone since we were sharing a villa with friends.

The doctors said I could go providing I'd be sure to get medical care out there so I posted on here and googled and then ran the 2 hospitals I found past a friend of mine from law school who's spanish and who's father is a consultant near where we were going and she promised that if there was a problem he'd mobilise his friends to help! So I felt as confident as possible but it still didn't stop the wibbles. Maybe you could go away somewhere in England in the summer holidays? We've done Cornwall for the last 2 years but atm I don't want to go further than an hour's drive from the hospital just in case.

Quempin - I have heard of one person delivering MCDA vaginally but only one. Everyone else seems to have cs due to TTS risk.

MrsS - glad your scan went well and very exciting that they'll be here soon. I hope they hold out until the end of the month.

Can I join your very special club?

Found out a couple of weeks ago that we were expecting twins at my first scan (an early one). They are DiDi (DCDA?). Am now 10+3. Nothing to happen until my scheduled 12 weeks scan - which over 2 weeks away. HOW am I going to wait until then to check if everything is ok, I don't know??

Nervous wreck over here!!

Look forward to chatting to you and learning from you all more experienced ladies!

Hi ravenlocks!!! Congratulations on your SUPER exciting news! DCDA are identical right? I found out I was having twins at 7 weeks - they were barely more than a speck on the ultrasound screen with two tiny little pixels for heartbeats that were beating away. Two weeks is a long time I know but just try and chill out as much as you can, rest, eat well etc - that's all you can do. If you have a DP / DH then make sure he does everything for you, you have important cells to concentrate on growing!! If everything was ok when you were scanned a couple of weeks ago there is NO reason to think that there is anything wrong at all so keep that in your mind.

Will these be your first children? I am 33 +1 with identical twins and they are my first. Nothing like jumping in at the deep end!!! Good Luck to you!

Hey MrsStevo, thanks for the reassurance, I know I should be rational!

Yes, will be my first so totally with you on the deep end analogy. I was told they were non identical and have their own sacks and placentas, but after some more googling today I found out that identical twins can also have their own sacks and placentas. Is that right? So now wondering how the sonographer could have been sure they were not identical. Have so much to learn! DH is being an angel and fussing over me left, right and centre - long may it continue!!

Congrats on your pg, wow you are so close now!

Hi everyone, sorry for staying away so long. I really wasn't convinced that I was going to be able to hang on to these two, but here I am at 11+2 and all ok so far.... I had quite a lot of scary bleeding yesterday but luckily was able to have a scan in the morning which showed the beans bouncing around. Am still stressing a bit about all the abdominal cramps, pains and twinges but trying to ignore them for most of the time!

It is my 12 week scan next week so am counting down the days to that and really hoping that everything will be "normal". Just wanted to ask those with MCDA twins (except Mrs S I've just read your post on this exact question which was great!) - I know it depends on the hospital, but how often were you scanned after 12 weeks? I spoke to an obs/gynae doctor (not consultant) after the midwife at my booking in appt and he totally freaked me out by saying that unless they were sharing a sac (which they're obviously not as are MCDA) then it would only be every 4 weeks - I really hope that's not the case as surely then they are at huge risk of missing TTTS? I can't face having to have a big fight with them about this!! As a massive shot in the dark, is anyone by any chance booked in to have their twins at St Thomas's in London?

I have read through the last few pages trying to catch up and am in awe of all those in the later stages of their pg who are just a mine of information!! Sorry I can't name-check everyone but just wanted to say...

MrsStevo am thrilled that your scan went well and fascinated to hear all about the amazing things they can do to check the babies are doing well. It is so exciting that you are going to meet them so soon!!!!

Myboots I loved reading the post about your twins and how they are getting on. I completely agree about you knowing best about whether to wake your baby in the night... I'm so glad you are getting a bit more sleep now!

Also wanted to say a big hello to quempin and ravenlocks who are still under 12 weeks like me... hope you're both feeling well - please keep posting all your news!

Ravenslocks - I'm expecting dcda twins. Although dcda are not automatically identical (mcda always are) there is still a 10% chance they can be because it's all dependant on whether they're dcda because you released 2 eggs which therefore grew their own placentas or if the 1 egg split early enough and that's why you have 2 placentas. If they split a few days later there's 1 placenta and they're MCDA, if a bit later than that then 1 sac and MCMA and if later than that then they'll be conjoined.

When most medical people refer to ID they mean MCDA and non-ID as DCDA but they can't know for sure with DCDA until they come out. The fetal medicine consultant told me the 10% statistic and I'd trust her over a sonographer

Ladybird - before they knew if mine were MCDA or DCDA they said they'd scan every 2 weeks for MCDA. That was at St Mary's in London.

Hi ladybird great to hear of a healthy scan today, you are 6 days ahead of me, hope we can keep in touch via the thread as will be great to compare stories as we go. Hi to quempin too as a fellow first trimester-er!

tiggersreturn wow thanks for that gem. Honestly until today thought I was guaranteed non identical twins. We want to find out sex when we can to help with the preparations (practical and mental!) so I guess if they are the same sex as each other we won't know until D-day. Do you know if yours are identical or not?

No idea! And I didn't want to find out the sex (dh did to see if they were ID) as I'd prefer to have a nice surprise when they come out.

Tiggersreturn I so admire your restraint! If my DH knew I think I would last all of 10mins before I would make him tell me. But what an amazing triple suprise when they arrive!!