I had a very challenging pregnancy, for the most part. I always said I wanted twins, and I got them. I always wanted girls and I got those, too, but the rest was hard. And unlike my own mother, who found out she was having twins when she was in labor, we had plenty of advance notice. So I should have been prepared, right?
Twenty-three weeks into my pregnancy, I had the teeny tiniest bit of spotting and I didn't feel great at the end of a day of car shopping. I figured I could wait until I met my doctor a few days later, but just in case, I called her that day to describe what I was feeling. She had me meet her at the hospital, where she told me I was having premature labor. I couldn't feel the contractions, but according to her, they were happening.
A neonatologist came in and more or less told us all of the awful things that could happen if our children were born at 23.5 weeks. I was put on bed rest, pumped full of drugs that made me feel awful but stopped the labor, and for the rest of my pregnancy, felt like a mother bird sitting on her eggs...one wrong move and they'd crack, and it would be all my fault.
It was incredibly hard to go from being a very active person to bed rest for 11 weeks. At first, I imagined that I'd do all those projects I'd never had time to do. But in reality, I felt too awful (thanks to the drugs) to be all that productive, and I mostly just ended up doing my job from bed, which was hard, since I was a coach, and it's hard to coach and recruit people you can't see.
When our children were born at 34 weeks (because a specialist decided it was time, not because I ever went into labor), weighing 5 lbs. 7 oz. and 5 lbs. 3 oz., that same neonatologist came into the delivery room and congratulated me on a job well done.
Everyone close to us breathed a collective sigh of relief. Our children were healthy and more or less perfect.
I spent the next few years feeling like we'd dodged a bullet. They hit all of their milestones, they were brilliant, life was good.
Any time I complained about things being hard or having more difficult children than most, people would say, "Well no wonder, you have twins. I can't imagine having two of [their child's name]."
But over the last 1.5 years or so, the things that just seemed like personality quirks began to stand out. At my children's 4-year appointment with the pediatrician, I passed her a note (since I didn't want to say this in front of my kids) that essentially said, "Help, I can't handle my children. What do I do? They're going to kill each other."
She sent us to a psychologist, which wasted a little time and didn't really get us anywhere. It wasn't until this past fall, when one of my children was basically in the process of getting kicked out of school, that it became clear that what was going on might not simply be a case of having a "spirited child" and that there might be a name for what we were dealing with.
One child, who was acting out more at school, got her diagnosis in February. The other got hers earlier this week. Both are on the autism spectrum (they have what would have previously been diagnosed as Asperger's) and have anxiety. We'll reassess in the future to determine if they have ADHD too. They also have sensory processing disorder.
The neuropsychologist said neither was a straightforward diagnosis, they're complicated cases. At first, I wondered if they were wrong--my children don't have many of the classic behaviors--but once I started googling girls and Asperger's and learning how it might look different in girls, I was totally on board.
My children are generally quite happy children. Whenever I start to stress over all of this, I remind myself that I have two awesome and amazing children. But I also worry about how this is all going to play out for them. We're lucky that we have a diagnosis this young. A relative was just diagnosed at age 15.
Our local school system has been pretty amazing in terms of how they've dealt with all of this so far and I like to think my children will be okay, but the truth is that we have no idea how any of this is going to play out. All parents worry, but I think we have a few extra things to worry about now. And yes, worrying doesn't help most of the time, but these are the kinds of things I think about when I'm awake in the middle of the night.
