Discovering Us Spin-Off: Our Surprise Pregnancy
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K. L. Jenkins
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First Scan
Spin-off: Our Surprise Pregnancy
VIOLET
As with every pregnancy, the boys couldn’t wait to see the baby on the scan—not even for my colleagues to fit me in. So Tyler had booked us in at the nearest place for a scan. And on Boxing Day, no less.
I’m ecstatic yet nervous. My last two pregnancies weren’t what you’d call fun.
The twins were high-risk and awful, and Antalya’s came after a long journey and another loss. I couldn’t enjoy either the twins’ pregnancy or hers, and that sour thought had been sitting in my mind all night.
I think the fact that we have no clue how far along I am has made everything feel heightened and worse. But I have a good idea that I might be quite far along since my last period was over twenty weeks ago.
There may have been signs I’ve ignored—a little queasiness here and there, feeling generally tired more often than not—but the low chances that any of the boys could father a child led me to believe I was just…aging.
Besides, my cycles never really came back after Antalya, and I was surprised because I never did go back onto birth control. But I thought perhaps God had decided we had enough children.
Don’t get me wrong, many times over the last twelve years, I’ve thought about going for one more, using the embryos none of us can bear to get rid of. But I’ve always ultimately ended up at the same stalemate.
If God wanted me to have more, then I would have.
The receptionist gives the four of us a weird look when we walk in, especially as she tells us about all the upgrades we can do, gestation-dependent. Tyler and Zach had unanimously decided to see how far along I was before deciding whether we do the four dimensions. Let’s be honest; they will opt in for that.
The wait isn’t too long, but our excitement threatens to engulf the four of us as the boys all touch me somewhere. Tyler is holding my hand, Zach is holding my leg, and Callum has reached behind Tyler to hold my shoulder.
It’s as if I’m their grounding mechanism, and right now, I wish I weren’t, because people are staring. Yeah, I know. Let them stare and all that. But shit, even after all this time, I haven’t gotten used to the attention the four of us reel in any time we’re out together like this.
“Mr. and Mrs. Henderson, please?” A young woman enters the hallway to greet us, looking through the reception area with happy and excited eyes.
I know that feeling—the thought of scanning an expectant mother…
Standing up, the boys follow me, Tyler never letting go of my hand. Again, people stare, making me nervous, yet the excitement of what’s about to happen overrides that.
“It’s lovely to meet you. Please come with me. My name is Natalie,” she says evenly as we walk back through the hall and enter her room.
It seems homey in here—vastly different from the sofa at home or the fertility clinic—and I realize that this is a first for us, that we’ve never been able to do this. Looking around the room, I notice a sofa to one side, a bed in the middle, and the machine to the left of the bed. On the wall is a large screen with a projector that mirrors the computer screen.
“Please sit, and Mrs. Henderson, why don’t you come and lie down? I’ll just input the information you filled out on the form, and then we will start,” she suggests.
I whisper my agreement, suddenly feeling shy in the face of finding out how far along I am with this miracle child that shouldn’t be.
“Are all your details correct on the screen?” Natalie asks me as I shuffle on the bed, making myself comfortable.
I nod my agreement, so she continues.
“So, based on gestation, we’ll decide the type of experience you guys have. Is this your first?” she asks while squirting the sonogram gel onto my tummy.
Zach’s laugh sidetracks me, making me look his way as the others smile silently, obviously finding her question ironic and hilarious.
“No, this will be my seventh,” I tell her to bridge the awkwardness. This only makes her blush at how terribly wrong she got the memo, but she purses her lips before nodding, putting a face of indifference back on.
“That’s a lot of children. You must have your hands full.”
“Our youngest is thirteen. We thought we’d skipped the sleepless nights and diapers, but God blessed us with another.” Zach smirks.
Natalie says nothing while moving the wand around my tummy, yet at first, nothing shows on the screen because she hasn’t mirrored anything yet. I wish she had; I wish I could have seen what she did and diagnosed my pregnancy myself, but I’m not in charge here. I’m the patient for once.
“Wonderful, there’s definitely a live pregnancy. Have a look,” Natalie says, picking up a remote to mirror the projector.
It flicks to life, an image of my uterus staring back at me; two round circles greet us with a baby inside each. Two, there are two—twins again?
“Twins?” I murmur aloud as anxiety sweeps through me at the thought of going through a pregnancy like Asher’s and Atticus’s again.
Gripping the bed, I fret as a wave of nausea threatens to make me throw my guts up again.
“Yes, I’d say fraternal. They each have their own sac and placenta. Congratulations,” Natalie says with a smile.
Yet I had already seen that—already clocked the physical divide between fetuses. They each have healthy sacs and solid placentas, and that is only reaffirmed as she measures the flow in and out of the umbilical cord while taking measurements from each baby in turn.
Baby B is hidden inside one of my ribs, meaning she finds it more challenging to get measurements of them, seemingly struggling with the angle at which it’s lying, so I instantly know what’s coming.
She has me repositioning, rolling to my side to encourage the baby to move, to dislodge from inside my rib to get a better view, and that’s when the average measurements find that Baby B is smaller by a few days, which is nothing to worry about, considering.
“Everything okay?” Zach asks, probably because of the tense silence.
“Nothing to worry about with fraternals,” Natalie mumbles, too deep in her work to answer the question correctly.
“Would you like to know the gender and try the four dimensions?” she asks us.
“We’d love to,” Zach agrees, eagerly overruling everyone with his excitement.
Laughing, we all watch the screen as she flicks the image to the four-dimensional view. Everything flips from flat to dimensional, and instantly, I see my babies’ features—so different from the other kids, yet also with similar characteristics.
That brings the raw thought of who these children belong to. My thoughts make me look at each of them with wonder. Surely Zach and Tyler’s negative semen samples mean the babies are not theirs, but then again, Callum had such bad swimmers that we had to undergo fertility treatment to get Antalya.
The odds are weirdly equal…
“Well, that’s something…isn’t it?” Zach’s voice brings my gaze to him and then to the screen as I look at my children again.
Wow, two more little darlings.
“I wasn’t expecting for there to be two. I had only just got my head around one,” I mutter, though I’m happy and joyful.
“Well, at least we don’t have to worry about them having a playmate…,” Callum adds slyly.
We all look to Tyler expectantly, wanting confirmation from him that he, too, finds these babies miraculous like the three of us.
“I think it might be harder this time around; we’re not young anymore, but it’ll be no less enjoyable, and you’re right, Callum. We don’t have to worry about them being lonely. They’ll always have each other,” he notes.
“So no reversal then. Is that what you’re saying?” Zach jokes.
“Let’s see how we cope with these two first, Zach,” I laugh, unsure if I want more.
I thought we had gotten to the point of having almost all grown-up children, meaning more time for us.
But God had other plans.
