JESSIE STEPHENS: On being pregnant with twins. As a twin. With twin brothers.

This article originally appeared on Jessie Stephens' Substack, Dwelling. Sign up here.

The ultrasound technician went very quiet a few minutes into my seven-week dating scan.

I was alone and nervous. I'd experienced a pregnancy loss and had fallen pregnant the next month, which is to say I was expecting bad news. I had come desperate to hear a heartbeat. When my husband later messaged me, asking, "is there a heartbeat?", I didn't know how to reply. There was an issue with his use of the singular noun.

She passed me some paper towel, signalling the end of the abdominal ultrasound. "I'm going to do an internal ultrasound, I'll take a little look then tell you what I can see, okay?" she said calmly. I changed, and as I laid back down, I wondered if maybe I was earlier than I'd calculated. Maybe she couldn't see anything yet. Numbers have never been my strong suit.

Watch: Jessie Stephens shares personal essay on miscarriage. Post continues after video.

The internal commenced and I stared at the ceiling. Minutes passed. "Alright," she said, "You can see, there's a heartbeat, there's your baby inside a sac…"

Then she tilted the angle of the probe slightly. "And there's another heartbeat. Another little baby, inside another little sac. You're having twins."

I've had a handful of moments in my life so shocking I truly thought I was dreaming. It's a cliche because, in moments of complete stupefaction or distress, that is precisely the question your brain asks itself. Am I truly in this room? Hearing that word? How can I have an unexpected pregnancy when I already knew I was pregnant? The moment I was told took on a dreamlike quality, an unrealness, as my brain tried to catch up to the present set of circumstances.

Image: Supplied.

It was interesting, the tone the woman used. I've thought about it a lot since. She was cautious. She did not project jubilation or concern. She presented the news as a fact she appreciated was significant, but left it up to me to decide whether that fact was met with excitement or fear. She was very good at her job.

I cried tears of shock. And joy. When she asked if twins ran in my family, I laughed. I am an identical twin. I also have identical twin brothers. You'd think this would've prepared me for the possibility of carrying twins, but everything I'd read said that identical twins are a spontaneous, random event. A fertilised egg splits. This phenomenon is not understood to run in families.

For most of my life I thought I was a fraternal twin. Fraternal twins have the same genetic similarity as siblings — two separate fertilised eggs, who just so happen to be born at the same time. When mum fell pregnant with my brothers she was told the same. They would be her second set of fraternal twins and a doctor put it down to magic ovaries. The term is technically hyperovulation but this did not, in the end, apply to my mother. The prevailing wisdom 35 years ago was that if twins had their own sac and their own placenta, they were fraternal. It turns out that is not necessarily the case.

Image: Supplied.

What never made sense was that my sister and I have exactly the same colouring. People who know us well can tell us apart, but it's not unusual for me to be referred to as Clare or her as Jessie. Sometimes we see photos and it takes a moment for us to work out which of us it is. Once I was walking down the street, looked left, and was surprised to see Clare. When I greeted her, I realised it was my own reflection.

However similar we are, my brothers are far more alike. Closer in height. Mistaken for the other more often. Last year, Nick snapped his Achilles playing basketball. This year, Jack snapped his Achilles. Playing basketball. Weird twin shit, as we call it.

When I started appearing on the podcast Mamamia Out Loud eight or so years ago, and it came up that I was a fraternal twin, the response from the twin community was swift. No, they commented and messaged and called in, you're not. We rolled our eyes. You can't just tell someone they're not a fraternal twin. Mum had no patience for this theory. "I gave birth to you, I think I'd know", she said, before muttering that we thought about ourselves too much.

Eventually, we relented and purchased a twin zygosity test. We swabbed the inside of our mouths and, in news that surprised no one except ourselves, we were identical. We told mum as though it was a very dramatic announcement and she seemed slightly irritated and asked what difference it made. Then she reminded us that we were still thinking about ourselves too much. Eventually, Jack and Nick did the same. Identical.

All that is to say that when I saw two babies in two sacs with two placentas, I knew there was still a chance they were identical. It just means they split early, and got their own room. These are called di-di twins and are the lowest risk twin pregnancy. The risk increases if the twins share a placenta, which is the case in about 10-15 per cent of twin pregnancies. Just as with any pregnancy, not all twin pregnancies are created equal. But all twin pregnancies are considered (to varying degrees) high risk.

In my first appointment with my obstetrician I learned that carrying di-di twins means I am at double the risk of developing conditions like gestational diabetes and preeclampsia. The chance of things like anemia, premature birth, low birth weight, postpartum hemorrhage and birth defects in the babies is also much higher. On top of all that, I decided I also would like to develop an urgent mental illness, so started reading everything I could on the subject. I came across an account of a woman on 10 weeks bed rest, unable to move. Another, who had to use a walker from 30 weeks. Excruciating pain. Feet that cannot fit into shoes. And that's without considering the health of the actual babies—a rabbit hole I have so far mostly avoided.

Listen to Jessie's pregnancy announcement here. Post continues after podcast.

What began as unmitigated excitement perhaps sensibly transitioned into fear. I am scared. I am scared about the pregnancy complications I will likely encounter. I am scared of being 30 weeks and measuring at 40 weeks. I am scared of what this will do to my body. I am scared for the health of my babies. I am scared one will stop growing. I am scared of what this pregnancy will do to my energy and mobility and how that will impact my relationship with my two-year-old daughter. And that's only what I'm scared of under the subheading of 'pregnancy'.

I am scared of trying a vaginal birth, and even if twin one is delivered safely, twin two might do somersaults and I'll have an obstetrician with his forearm so far past my cervix it will be like I am a puppet. I am scared of having a vaginal birth, then needing to deliver the second via caesarean section, and recovering from two forms of birth at once. I am scared of the recovery from a caesarean while caring for newborn twins and a toddler. And 'scared' doesn't even cover how I feel when I wake up at 2am and start ruminating on the subject of breastfeeding. Or sleep. Eventually, I conclude it simply cannot be done, and drift back off.

When you become part of a community—and by that I mean you start asking very specific questions to very specific people because you are in their very specific position—you start to encounter a rare form of honesty. It becomes a lifeline during a time when you feel your most vulnerable and most alone.

Here is what I did not know about the experience of being told you are pregnant with twins. A twin pregnancy is never planned. It is not, in all likelihood, how you saw your family looking. You imagined one. I imagined a sizable but hopefully manageable adjustment. I imagined my last newborn experience but maybe with a little more confidence.

I did not imagine the news would be so complicated. That you think so much about money and logistics and whether or not you need a fucking van. That so many people descend into but it was only meant to be one.

I have decided I am allowed to say all that because I am a twin. Being a twin has been one of the greatest gifts of my life. It has largely protected me from the experience of loneliness. I entered the world as a unit, as a part of something, and that sense has been sustained over the nearly 35 years since. Mine is an identity fused to another identity, a partnership that has never, and will never, come under threat. I do not know a life without compromise and negotiation, and my own self has never been demarcated from another. I have the joy of knowing that brown hair does not suit me, without ever having had to dye my hair brown (she did. It looked terrible). And all the time I get to try things out by watching someone else do them. When you are a twin (or I suppose, a certain kind of twin. There are many twins who do not share this closeness) life is a team sport. From pre-school to kindergarten to high school to university, I never had to walk into a new environment by myself. For that I feel tremendously lucky.

Image: Supplied.

So, I thought I knew a lot about twins. My vantage point, however, had been very specific. I had never, until it happened to me, truly considered how my parents felt when they were told they were having twins. Or how they felt when they were told not even two years later that they were having another set of twins. Four kids under two-and-a-half. If adulthood is a journey towards understanding your parents, then this seems like the next logical plot point.

Most people who are told they are having twins don't have a mother like mine. She has had twins vaginally and by caesarean section. She has breastfed twins. She has formula fed twins. She's had twin girls. She's had twin boys. She's had twins alongside toddlers. She's had twins she carried to term, and another set who went early. She's had a twin pregnancy where she was active and well and relatively comfortable, and she's had a twin pregnancy with six weeks bed rest. She's encountered doctors who are terrified at the prospect of twins, and doctors who are experts in them. No one is more qualified to be the grandmother of twins than my mum.

My daughter and my twin sister's daughter are five months apart. Watching them play one afternoon, I asked mum if this was like twins all over again. She told me it was nothing like it. Twins, she explained, never have to get to know each other. Other babies—siblings, cousins, friends—do.

Most people in their lifetime will never get to watch newborn twins see each other for the first time. Mum tells stories about how she'd catch us sucking on each other's thumbs. What a privilege to bear witness to one of the most remarkable, deep and unexplainable relationships that humans experience.

I remain scared. My husband surfaces a new anxiety every day and I keep trying to reassure him that there's something about twins that is awfully efficient. One pregnancy, two babies. Everything is doubled, but in five years we won't have babies anymore. But what reassures me is knowing how lucky these twins are. In the darkness of my womb, they already have a companion. They can probably already feel the kicks from their playmate next door. When they arrive into a bright, noisy, overwhelming world, they will bring with them a friend they knew from Before.

And that will just be the beginning.

P.S. I surprised my co-hosts with the news on Friday's episode of Mamamia Out Loud. If you want to hear what the pregnancy has been like so far, listen right here.

Feature Image: @jessiestephens90 Instagram.