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Wednesday, October 13, 2010

Veda and Linus FAQ's


1. Are they identical?

No. One is a boy, which means he has XY chromosomes, and one is a girl, so she has XX chromosomes. This means they DO NOT have identical DNA.

You’d be surprised how often people ask this.

2. Do twins run in your family?

No. Linus and Veda are miracles of science. It took a team of doctors, embryologists, and lab technicians in two different cities to help us create them with IVF and Assisted Hatching. I don’t mind telling anyone this, because it’s proof of how much they were wanted and loved before they even existed.

3. Do they have different personalities?

Well, yeah. They’re different people. Being a twin will always be a part of their respective identities, but they are individuals, and we make efforts to promote their individuality.

4. Are they crawling?

Linus does an army crawl with increasing efficiency. Veda is content to watch. We’re pretty sure that she’s going to skip crawling and go straight to walking.

5. Who was born first?

Most people think it must be Linus since he’s bigger, but, nope, it was little Veda. She was Baby A all along, which just means that she was closer to the birth canal. Even though they were born by Caesarian, she still managed to make it out one minute before her brother. You’d be eager to get out of there too if you’d been stuffed in there with a brother who was still turning flips at 37 weeks.

6. Were they premature?

No. We made it to one day short of 38 weeks before our planned C-section.

7. How much did they weigh?

Veda was 4 lbs 14 oz, and Linus was 5 lbs 10 oz. Veda was diagnosed with IUGR (Intrauterine Growth Restriction) towards the end of my pregnancy. I’ve had pediatric nurses ask me if I’m sure that she wasn’t premature. Uh, yeah. I was there. Pretty sure.

8. Do they play together?

At this point toy stealing makes up the majority of their playtime interactions. Occasionally they do make an even trade of toys, which they seem to have some sort of mutual understanding about. I love, love, love it when they look at each other and grin and coo or babble to one another. It melts my mommy heart and reminds me all over again why all of those shots in my hip with the world’s biggest needle were worth it.

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2 comments:

  1. Uhh, people seriously ask if they are identical? It astounds me how stupid that is. (I know, that's not nice... but there it is.) I didn't know you had done assisted hatching. Neat! I couldn't agree with you more. I love, love, love telling the story of how Elise, our "designer baby," was painstakingly created by geniuses in lab coats wielding highly sophisticated instruments! (ICSI is quite the impressive operation!)

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  2. I think that people just start talking before they think. It's what I want to believe.

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