IT SPLIT!

Today was our first ultrasound... and boy was it memorable.

Going into the day we had a lot of questions.  Did both embryos implant... meaning twins??  Would we see a heartbeat??  Would we see anything at all?? 

Mandy's blood tests, which she had taken over the last two weeks, had produced some really good numbers.  So high, in fact, that we thought there was a real possibility that it could be twins.

The moment the ultrasound began, you could clearly see one large round spot, and nothing else.  The ultra sound tech quickly noted to us that we had ONE precious little baby!  The large round spot we were seeing was the sack, which holds the baby.  If both embryos had implanted, then we would have had two sacks.  Obviously, we felt extremely blessed with our one.  It was so exciting to actually get to see the little guy.  She pointed out its size, which was about 5mm (or about the size of an uncooked grain of rice), and showed us its heartbeat!  That was a really special moment.  To know that a thing so little was alive with a beating heart was really breathtaking.

As she continued to show us around the inside of Mandy's uterus, the ultrasound tech noticed something that made her say, "Now, wait just a second...."  Then came the shock of the day... Our single sack contained not one, but TWO BABIES!!  HOLY COW!!  This meant that our single embryo had split in two!  Meaning we are having IDENTICAL TWINS!  Can you believe that?  Because we sure couldn't.  I know its hard to tell in the picture below, but they are both inside the black circle in the middle, laying on opposite sides of each other.

It was awesome!  We have twin babies, both of which measured perfectly for a 6 week and 1 day old baby.  And both have beating hearts!  We actually got to HEAR both heartbeats!  How amazing is that?!  In case you were wondering, the chances of an embryo splitting is less that 1%.  So obviously we feel awesomely blessed.

We haven't stopped laughing and smiling about it.  Praise the Lord. 

Our official full-term due date is October 11, 2010.... However, very often twin pregnancies are completed early.  So our expectation is sometime around mid-September.

We have another ultrasound in two weeks.  If all goes well with that one, then we will probably let the world know and make this blog live.  These last two pictures are a couple of fun ones from today...