Smith Family Fun X2: Our Family is Growing

Thought ya'll would enjoy some pictures and learn about our pregnancy journey!

Ryan and I had originally started our pregnancy journey exploring the midwife group at Swedish Ballard. We opted for the 1st trimester ultrasound (I wanted to see my baby!) and we had our 1st ultrasound when I was 8 1/2 weeks pregnant. The ultrasound tech said within about 5 seconds of looking at the images "So....I see two babies!" Ryan and I were shocked, scared and excited all at the same time. This will be the 3rd set of twins on my side of the family and I hadn't even thought of it being a possibility since we had gotten pregnant! It was amazing to see on the screen in front of us two little heartbeats!

I kept thinking of that last episode of Friends when Chandler & Monica are at the hospital and find out they are not only getting 1 but 2 babies. Chandler kept saying "Twins!? Twins!? Monica says "Chandler you're panicking!" Chandler says "Uh huh! Join me won't you?!" That's how I was feeling at first! Ryan was calm and excited and I soon grew excited too! We learned the next day...no more midwife group!

1st picture of our babies!

At this point no one else knew about the twins! Ryan wanted to wait until Thanksgiving to share our pregnancy announcement because Grandma Loretta was coming into town along with Uncle Brad, Aunt Amy (Kelsey's parents), Aunt Sherri & Patrick. I told him we had to tell them sooner since I would likely be showing by Thanksgiving. We comprised and decided to tell his immediate family one Seahawk Sunday (after a win!) in late October that we were so excited to share that we we were expecting! Little did they know it was 2 babies! We decided to hold on to that secret! :)

We go to Ryan's parents house in Redmond almost every Sunday for family dinner--which is fun to see everyone, especially our two growing nieces Bonnie & Lucy! On that evening, Ryan happened to have been holding Lucy (4 months old at the time) and I asked to the family "what do you think the Seahawks would think of this?" and I pulled out my Seahawk onesie out of my sweatshirt (of course our 1st purchase was a 3 pack of Seahawk onesies...before we found out there were two...and before we found out the genders)! Everyone smiled and Cameron (Ryan's dad) said "that's so cute, is that for Lucy?" No one caught on until I lowered the onesie to my tummy! Everyone got so excited and we were bombarded with hugs and congrats! Rachel, my sister-in-law, insisted on taking a pic to share the good news (thanks Rachel!)! It was a great Sunday dinner!

Our 1st family picture + Lucy

A few weeks later, Ryan & I got to see the babies again for a Nuchal Translucency Ultrasound and met with a genetic counselor. We were so happy that all our tests came back normal and our babies appear to be healthy! Our ultrasound tech was so sweet and nice, she had twins herself who were 18 or 19 years old!

Baby A aka Left Twin was up first for the scan. It was sleeping and cozy and didn't want to move to wake up after several minutes of measurements. We moved on to Baby B aka Right Twin who was doing "slip and slides" as the tech called it--kicking off with it's feet and sliding up and back down! It even had the hiccups at one point--a very active little baby! Finally the baby stopped for a second and we were able to capture the needed image for the nuchal translucency test (they measure the back thickness of the neck to see the risk of down syndrome).

Meet Baby B aka Right Twin with it's feet up

After doing a few dance moves (following the tech's instructions!) on the ultrasound table and spending a little time laying on each side we finally tried to get Baby A to cooperate. With gravity & movement the baby finally woke up and we got the needed image!

Meet Baby A aka Left Twin with an arm up and legs up

Being pregnant is so fun when you get to announce to friends and family in different ways! Next up was my announcement for our annual Girl's Weekend on Decatur Island 11/8--11/10 with some of my closest friends! My Mom (and her best friend Barb) already knew we were pregnant (told my Mom very early on!) but my girlfriends and my cousin Ashley who flew in for the weekend didn't know! After sharing the exciting news I was pregnant, I asked if they wanted to see the ultrasound?! My Mom was very anxious as I had purposely not shown her because my plan all along was to drop the twin bomb this girls weekend. I showed her first and it took her a moment to figure it out (I actually had to point out the words "Baby A" & "Baby B" on the ultrasound (1st pic on this post). Her reaction was priceless as was my friends (wish we had it on video)!

My Mom was in shock for quite a while!

2 babies!

1st belly pic with Mom and the twins at 11 weeks!

My friends are the greatest! We missed you Leslie!

Next up...the big Thanksgiving announcement to Ryan's family! This we captured on video thanks to Lauren, Garrett's girlfriend! I didn't sleep much the night before...too excited to spill the big secret! You'll see on the video, at first we announce our family is growing. You don't see a lot of reaction because 12 of the 17 people there knew already we were expecting (only the family that lives in California didn't know) and then...

It was a truly memorable Thanksgiving!

The entire Smith family, so much to be thankful for!

As the holidays continued, we celebrated a belated Hanukkah with my family. It was great to get our parents together, we need to do that more often!

We are so lucky to have such supportive parents (and very excited soon to be grandparents)!

Ryan & I thought surprises were over at least until our Gender Reveal Party which was planned for this month in January. When I transitioned from Swedish Ballard to a different practice that would deliver at Swedish First Hill (safer for the babies, they have a NICU if needed), I soon learned I would get a 16 week ultrasound, that week! We decide the night before the ultrasound that if the tech could tell the genders that we would find out and not wait until January, we just wanted to know!! Sure enough the babies cooperated on December 20th and it was clear as day! My parents and my sister were awaiting my phone call and were thrilled when I called and announced the genders and told them both babies looked very healthy and active!

At this point we were very good at keeping secrets, (especially from Ryan's family) so on Christmas Eve I got 2 mylar balloons and had fun wrapping them up to put under the Christmas tree the next day!

To: Gree-ma & Pop Pop

From: Baby A & Baby B

 Our Christmas Gender Reveal Video--they had no clue this was coming!

I also filled the boxes with blue confetti and made "It's a Boy" chocolate suckers!

Our cousin Kelsey was up for helping with a surprise (thanks Kelsey!) so she got mylar balloons on Christmas Eve to surprise the rest of the family on Christmas day. We facetimed with them on our iPads. I managed to take one screenshot as the balloons floated up. This picture of Grandma is priceless!! The California family was quite surprised as everyone didn't think we'd know the genders until January!

Grandma Loretta had no idea what was in the big box!

"Real men make TWINS"(a gift from Garrett)

This is how I revealed the genders to my girlfriends during our holiday cookie decorating night :)

I just recently started taking some pregnant selfie pics! I should be able to wear these 3 tops for a while so I'm going to try and keep taking pictures in them so you can really see the changes.

Enjoy!...