18.5 Weeks - Detailed Ultrasound

For the non-twin mommas, 18-19 weeks is an exciting time because you get a detailed ultrasound, and usually find out the gender.  We obviously found out the gender weeks before, but the detailed scan is still exciting because you get some confirmation that everything is going okay.  By that time, the babies are big enough that you can see their brain, heart, limbs, etc.

At our detailed ultrasound (a marathon event since they have two babies to check) the ultrasound tech confirmed that they are definitely girls, so that's good.  The specialist also said that the babies look beautiful and don't seem to have any defects.  They are within 4% of each other in terms of size, which means they are essentially exactly the same size (very very good news from a twin-to-twin transfusion perspective).

The only concerning issue was that one baby has a "marginal cord insertion," which means that the umbilical cord attaches to the placenta on the edge of the placenta, instead of the middle.  Apparently this is not uncommon with identical twins, since there's less room in the middle for each cord to grow.  The concern with this is that sometimes babies with marginal cord insertions don't get enough nutrients, and therefore don't grow properly.  It means sometimes you have one big baby and one little baby (just like with TTTS). Since the babies are the same size now, we aren't too concerned, but it's just one more thing that they'll have to monitor.

Here are the pictures from the detailed scan. As I've mentioned in previous posts, the babies are now officially too big to pose nicely in the same photo. Probably no more super cute twin photos, but luckily each baby is still pretty darn cute :)

* Note, with this last picture, if you look carefully, the reason you can't see baby's face is because her sister's spine is in the way. That fuzzy thing you see is a rib cage. These pictures can be slightly creepy :)