you're having twins.

This being my first pregnancy and all, most of the time I didn't know any better. No one can ever experience pregnancy from anyone else's perspective, but in hindsight there were some signs (ok, sign after sign after sign) that something extraordinary was brewing. I had never done this before. I had nothing to compare it to.

Apparently everyone else knew before I did.

Sign number one was the very first sign I was pregnant. Our very independent French cat, Tippen, who immigrated all the way from rural France with my husband and I, has never ever been a cuddly lap cat. He is a hunter, happy to spend hour after hour stalking birds and mice and other cats and racoons and cars through the tall grass of our overgrown yard. All of a sudden, come the beginning of April, he started rubbing up on my legs, purring wildly and "making biscuits" as a wonderful friend so endearingly describes it, while trying to find a comfortable spot on my lap. At first I thought it meant we had found the perfect house. We both had agreed the second we stepped through the front door that the whole property had incredible energy. You could just tell there had been a lot of love living under this roof for a whole lot of years. It was infectious and we soon fell in love with the house as much as we were in love with each other. I thought love had drugged our cats, too. Turns out it was hormones. Lots of hormones. Maybe I should have paid more attention to what Tippen was trying to tell me...

Sign number two was the pregnancy test. The friend who consoled me that April morning was right - it is the darkest freaking pregnancy test line ever. I still have it and the other one (why did I take two and not the three provided in the box?) wrapped up in a plastic baggie in my medicine cabinet and it is pink. I figured it meant I was really pregnant. The egg had implanted. I was really fertile. Well, that's exactly what it meant. I was really fertile. Maybe I should have paid more attention to what my friend told me...

Sign number three was a dream. Not my dream, but my father-in-law's. When we first found out I was pregnant we decided that my husband's family, being so far away on the other side of the globe in France, would be the first to know. They would be missing so much of baby's life with us living in the States, it was only fair. We called them as soon as we could and delivered the news. That night my husband's father had a dream. In it were two beautiful little boys, running, running towards him, always running. He called the next day to tell us. "You are having twins," he said. I laughed. "How ambitious of you!" I replied. "I think we're good with just the one for now." The thing is, he is not the type to have symbolic dreams or take stock in them, and even less the type to share them. Maybe I should have paid more attention to what my father-in-law was trying to tell me...

Sign number four was my instincts. I knew from the very beginning that I wanted a midwife. I was born in a midwifery, I loathed hospitals, and I trusted in my body. I wanted to find someone who trusted in me, too. We found a group of midwives locally who had a little midwifery not too far from our house. We walked hand-in-hand to our check-ups and often ran into the midwives at the local farmers market or co-op. It felt perfect. I was terrified something was going to go wrong and I wouldn't be able to deliver in their quaint little birthing room. One of the few reasons we would need to transfer elsewhere was if we were having twins. We weren't, so it wasn't an issue; I even asked them to check for two heartbeats at one of the appointments. "Do twins run in either of your families?" Nope. "Are you taking hormones of some sort?" Nope. Plus I wasn't over thirty-five, I wasn't obese, I didn't consume any dairy products (the hormones in dairy can sometimes cause women to over-ovulate, releasing more than one egg and resulting in multiples). I was pretty much the least likely candidate ever for having twins. I had a 0.06% chance. Still, they humored me and tried to find a second heartbeat. "It would be pretty hard to distinguish two separate heartbeats this early on," they told me. "But we can pretty confidently say you are not pregnant with twins." Still, in the back of my mind, one of the reasons I didn't want to get an ultrasound was if there were for some reason two babies in there, if we didn't get an ultrasound to find out for sure, they couldn't refuse me. We'd just go along with everything as planned and then after baby one came out they'd laugh, surprised, and out would come baby two. Do most people have these weird thoughts hidden in the back of their pregnant minds? I think not. Maybe I should have listened to what my instincts were trying to tell me...

Sign number five was my belly. It was growing at an alarming rate. My jeans stopped fitting before the nausea had even subsided. I was too big for a belly band to work around my old pants. The lady at the maternity store had told us whatever size you are before you get pregnant, that is the size maternity clothes that will fit. Not true. Of course I just assumed she didn't know what she was talking about. She did. When you're normally supposed to be gaining around a pound a week and you're gaining at least two, it's not the salesclerk at Motherhood Maternity who is in the wrong. And when your belly is supposed to be growing at about a centimeter a week and yours is five weeks ahead, you might have a serious problem. Maybe I should have listened to what my body was trying to tell me...

The last sign was every freaking other person in the entire world. I cannot tell you how many times upon divulging I was pregnant, even loooong before I was showing, I would be told, "Aw!!! Oh! You're having twins, I just know it!!" or "It's twins, I swear!" or "What if you were pregnant with twins?!" I asked the midwives if this was normal. "Is it a thing, when you're pregnant does everyone come up and touch your belly and tell you you're having twins?" They looked at each other. "Um, no." And yet that was my whole life as a pregnant lady. We had a friend staying with us for a few months right when I first got pregnant; he told me I was having twins. I thought he was joking until one of my best friends came to visit from Iowa and, a twin herself, they constantly bickered about whether I was having two boys or a boy and a girl. I had to constantly remind them there was only one baby in there. They both just shook their heads at my naivete. Another amazing friend, a friendly viking of a man, very seriously told me I was gestating two little monsters. Customer after customer at the deli where I worked informed me I was not with one child, but two. One kind woman who I could chat with for hours was so excited when I told her I was pregnant. Her only response? "It's twins!!!" she shouted, and skittered off smiling. Her husband came over to me in the wake of her energy. "She's psychic, you know." He leaned in closer to my scowl. "She tends to predict these things, and every time she's right." My co-workers joked about it; my friends joked about it; strangers joked about it. And every time I had to correct them politely. How funny, haha, how silly, what fun. "Unfortunately, there is only one baby in here," I would say. Maybe I should have listened to what every freaking person in the entire world was trying to tell me...

For someone who trusted her body, trusted her baby and had such faith in the universe, I was not very receptive to any of it. Maybe I should have opened my ears, opened my heart and opened my mind and just freaking listened to the universe...