"Do Twins Run In Your Family?"

As interfiles, we learn to deal with a lot of awkward conversations.  In the beginning, we were asked the common questions of "when are you going to have kids?" by people you know, or "do you have kids?" from people you don't know.

Those questions never really bothered me too much, although I know that others find those types of questions rather painful.  Even though I never got upset by those questions, it was still an awkward conversation to have at times.  You get lots of unsolicited advice, and I cannot even begin to tell you how many times I was asked if I'd ever considered adoption, or asked "why don't you just adopt?"

In fact, my MIL and another good friend of mine always felt the need to call me when they knew of a child in need of adoption.  They'd give me the whole story, tell me I should call so and so, and think that we could magically just adopt this child in need.  Little did they know that there is a whole entire process that has to take place.  Also, the child's extended family isn't able to just pick who they want to adopt their little one. The system unfortunately doesn't work that way.  I'd always get my hopes up and think well, maybe, what if, every time this would happen.  Another factor that people don't realize is that adoption is expensive!

Now, fast forward to our present situation.  We are finally pregnant after 16 years of being married and 14 years of trying for a family.  The questions have changed, especially now that I am obviously pregnant with my growing belly.

Remember I work in a fitness club with the public, so I see a lot of people on a daily basis at work.  When people find out I am having twins, it never fails that they ask "do twins run in your family?"  Actually, now that I think about it, I've been asked that by a few nurses as well!  Everyone just seems to jump to that question.

This is how the conversation typically goes down:

"Do twins run in your family?"

Me: "No."

"Oh, so it was a surprise then?  Were you and your husband shocked?"

Me:  "Nope.  We knew it was a possibility."

Then comes the befuddled look on the person's face.  Sometimes I will tell them that we had a lot of help from science, or we had to undergo fertility treatments to get pregnant.  I have not had ANYONE respond to that and the conversation usually ends there.  It's always awkward, but I really don't mind that either.

The one question that does get me a little bit though:  "is this your first baby(ies)?"

Yes.  And our last.

Even if we were only pregnant with one baby, this would still be our last.  I am 39 years old and Hubby will be 41 in January.  He's already a little freaked out that we are going to be (almost) 60 when these kids graduate from high school.

Besides that, it's not like we could just decide to have another baby even if we wanted to.  We are in debt up to our ears getting pregnant now, and it took us 14 years to get here.  It also required an egg donor. Yes, these will be our first babies, but they will also be our last.

We've decided there is one really great thing about all this infertility stuff.  Hubby doesn't ever have to worry about getting snipped!