Heath & Stef plus 2

With the news of us expecting twice as many babies as we were expecting to expect, our friends and family have flooded us with their support and enthusiasm. We're very lucky to have you all in our lives and our kids will be too! We're gonna need all the help we can get!!!

Our doctors are fairly certain that our twins are identical. Here's more about the science of it. When we conceived, one egg was fertilized by one sperm, resulting in a single zygote. During the time around conception, I was working on a big release at work for Cerner.com. It wasn't going well and was probably the most frustrating and stressful experience I've ever had at work. Because of what our twins are sharing, we can tell that during the week after conception, which was at the peak of that stress, our zygote spontaneously split into two identical zygotes. It's hard not to wonder if it's related to my state of mind, but it's widely accepted that there is no scientific explanation for this random splitting. Identical twins cannot be explained by hereditary influence, fertility treatments, birth control pills, or maternal age. There is anecdotal evidence of twins in the Morgan family history (fraternal, I think), but I don't know how many sets, how far back or any of the details. Regardless of that, identical twins aren't the result of genetic history, but a random occurrence. No one knows how it happens. But it's fun to blame it on Cerner.com... For us, it was a lucky random act of nature!

Some of the changes I've experience over the last few months have astounded me. What in the world is the purpose of heightening a pregnant woman's sense of smell so much? That was a terrible idea, in my opinion. We already have enough problems with nausea... why compound that with super-spidey smell powers so we can experience everyone's breath magnified 10 fold? Every bad smell in the world seems to find its way to me to torture me.

Another thing that's amazing is the way my taste buds have changed. I'm sure everyone knows that Heath and I are beer drinkers. I was a little worried about how hard it was going to be not having a Friday night beer. It's amazing that soon after conception, beer sounded completely repulsive to me. That kinda makes sense. Now explain this one: I can't even look at meat. We all know that protein is very important to growing babies, right? Tell that to my stomach. I have to trick it into eating meat. I can only eat meat if I can't see it. Quesadillas are great because the meat is hidden between two tortillas. But as soon as a piece of chicken peeks out and shows itself, I have to immediately stop eating before I make a scene gagging all over the place.

As for morning sickness, it rears its ugly head any time of day and sticks around for hours. I have good days and bad days - more good than bad, thankfully. As soon as I have a stretch of good days and think I'm rounding a corner, a really bad day hits and debilitates me. I think nature doesn't want me to get too cocky. I'm definitely humbled... Even though my little bump has been quite obvious for 3 or 4 weeks now and I try my hardest to force-feed myself, I've been losing weight. But I actually gained weight this week! For the first time since they took up camp in my uterus, I have a net gain in weight - 2 ½ pounds!

Making people is hard work. I love it, but it's definitely not a glamorous job.