Congratulations! Very scary news and it's taken me a good few weeks to get my head round it - I was told at my 20 week scan, which was 11 weeks ago.
Re the pg thing, I'm needing to stop now and I'm 31 weeks. I get around OK, but I often feel out of breath, sometimes from just coming upstairs, or from walking to the door and talking to someone on the doorstep! We don't have a big house. I've got friends who had twins, one of whom was on crutches at 20 weeks because her pelvis started to separate early, and one who was in a wheelchair to go round the supermarket at 30 weeks. So be prepared! I can still walk three miles, though it'll take me 3 hours... (Did it the other weekend by accident.) You've seriously, seriously got to listen to your body because it WILL tell you what you should not be doing. This is the first week that I've done that properly and I feel so much better.
Also keep a check on your iron levels - low iron can make you breathless, BUT make sure you get the actual numbers from the docs/midwives - a healthy pregnancy Hb count is 9.5 to 10.5. If it's higher there's more chance that you could end up with toxaemia. Also get them to tell your MCV (mean corpuscular volume) which should be above 84 in pregnancy. If those figures are around that mark by 30 odd weeks, then you're not anaemic, and you're doing very well. Also, it's worth taking a special vitamin and mineral supplement for pregnancy even if you've got a good diet. You're local health food shop will have a good one. If you do need to catch up a bit on iron, don't use the prescription pills as they can give you gut problems (constipation and the like) but get some Floradix or Spatone, also from the health food shop. They're both very gentle forms of iron that your body can absorb well and that don't have any nasty after affects. Floradix will increase your Hb count by about 1 point per week, and you can double the dose if you need to.
There's lots of information about these kinds of things on the Association of Radical Midwives website, which is where I got all of this from when I was told I was anaemic two weeks ago! My Hb is 10.7 and MCV is 89 so actually I'm fine. I've found it's really useful to be knowledgable about twin pregnancy so you can ask the right questions and challenge any answers that you're not sure about. I've begun being treated with much more respect by both my community midwives and the hospital lot too.
Emma Mahoney's Double Trouble book is very good for practical info, both pregnancy and after. I'm about to get hold of another three books, kindly donated by my mother in law, so I'll let you know if any of them are useful once I've read them!
Multiple Birth Foundation has lots of guidelines and stuff too which you can buy from the website, but be careful because they can be a bit scary - if you're not keen on too many statistics and some of the negative stuff about twins probably best to keep away. Personally I like to know EVERYTHING, so I found it very helpful.
Local Sure Start twins clubs are also quite helpful to go along to, just to see how other Mums cope "in the flesh". I've gone to one and taken DD with me - she's loved it and got into the activities and playing with the other children, AND the babies too, so it's been a good experience for her as well as me. And you don't have to do anything except drink tea and sit and rest and chat.
Hope this isn't too much info! Can't give you anything about the other side of birth, but the D'you ever thread has some great people who share wonderful things! The toilet duck has got me VERY worried as I've got two boys on the way... BOYS!!!
Will post again if I find anything else that might be useful. Sorry I've got such happy typing fingers!
Keep well!
Doris