Happy Birthday Skyler & Spencer!

Like many little girls, I was planning out my adult life at a young age. As long as I can remember I knew I was going to have twins. Bubby, my great grandmother, was a twin. She was Ruby and her sister was Ruth. I believe at least one of Ruth’s children had a set of twins as well. But Bubby only had one child [my grandma]. Grandma had three children, but all of them singletons. And I am my mom’s only child. So having twins didn’t seem to be in my genes.

As a little girl I dreamed I would have twin girls. I was going to name them Hannah and Haley. And I would dress them alike every day. And put bows in their hair. And….well you get the picture.

Early in January 1999, I started to have full days of nausea. We were trying for another child, but it was too early for a pregnancy test. However, I couldn’t stand the wait so I went to the doctor for a blood pregnancy test. It was negative. And I was devasted.

But the nausea continued. And four days later, on February 2nd, my period was mysteriously absent. So I took a home pregnancy test. This time there was a very, very faint line. Could it be true?

Later that day I went back to the doctor for another blood test. This time it was positive. I felt like doing cartwheels. Only I can’t do cartwheels. So instead I just got giddy and told everybody I knew. Some women wait until they are 12 weeks before they tell people. I was 12 days.

But the nausea continued. And got even worse. I couldn’t eat anything put popsicles. Nothing else stayed down. My OB gave me some medicine, but I couldn’t even keep that down.

Finally my doctor decided to do an ultrasound to “rule out a multiple pregnancy.” She scheduled the ultrasound for a couple of days later. But I already knew I was having twins.

At the ultrasound, the technician slathered on some cold goo, ran her wand over my belly and said, “here’s why you’re so sick. You’re having twins.” Lee’s jaw dropped to the floor. But I wasn’t suprised at all.

Immediately I started to think about names. After more than fifteen years of being in love with the names Hannah and Haley, I was sick and tired of those names so I had to come up with new ones.

After our next ultrasound, on June16th, we discovered that at least one of the babies was a boy. The other baby was being shy and we couldn’t tell the sex. I decided if it was two boys we would name them Nathaniel and Nicholas. We would call them Nate and Nick for short. If it was a boy and a girl I wanted to name them Ian and Isabelle.

On July 22nd, I had another ultrasound. This time the tech said her best guess is that Baby A is a girl. However, Lee wasn’t really loving Isabelle and Ian, so I had to come up with new names.

After some thought, I decided on Sierra and Spencer. But Lee didn’t like Sierra.

One night we went out to dinner with my family. As we were waiting to be seated Lee told me he wanted to name the girl. Apparently he thought he should be able to name one of them. I reluctantly agreed. He chose Skyler. We chose Skyler, not Skylar or Schuyler, so it would match with Spencer.

On October 4th, I went to the hospital for yet another ultrasound and my weekly non-stress test. The doctor on-call decided we’d waited long enough and he induced me.

At 7:15pm, Baby A was born weighing 7 pounds 5 ounces and measuring 21 inches long. I finally got to meet my beautiful baby girl. And we named her Skyler.

At 7:39pm, Baby B was born weighing 7 pounds 14 ½ ounces and was 20 ½ inches long. And he was so handsome. We named him Spencer.

Seven years later, those little babies have grown in to one beautiful little girl and one very handsome little boy.

Happy Birthday Skyler & Spencer!