You can never have too many placentas

I am going to say something that is totally unheard of and politically incorrect - I do care whether it is a boy or a girl.  When someone asks you if you're hoping for a boy or a girl, you're supposed to say "I don't care, as long as the baby is healthy!"  This is a huge lie.

The truth is, I REALLY want a baby girl.  Before we found out we were having twins, I was really hoping for a girl.  So much so, that the whole reason I wanted to find out the sex was so that if it was a boy, I didn't want to feel disappointed in the delivery room, so I needed time to be happy about it.

Then we found out about the twins ( a whole 'nother story!)  The tech showed us the sex of Baby A, and there was clearly a penis.  Small, but significant.  We examined Baby B really closely, and there was no penis.  I made him look really hard.  He told us that he is not allowed to say for sure what the sex of a baby is, but I got him to level with me, and he said he felt fairly sure that it was a girl.  I did too - I looked VERY closely.  At the ultrasound, he told us that the babies were in two different sacs, but he said he wasn't allowed to say whether or not there were two placentas - weird, I thought, but I was concerned about other things at the time.

So, last doctor's appointment, I remembered about the placenta issue, and I asked my doctor how many there were - I never would have thought to have cared, except that the tech kind of made it sound like it was a big deal.

"Well," she said, looking at the ultrasound pics, "there are two sacs.  Which is expected, since you have boy and girl" (I had told her that) "And it looks like one placenta."

"So what does that mean?" I asked.

"Nothing," she replied, "there's just one, that's all."

I knew right then that this didn't add up.  When it comes to pregnancy, nothing never means nothing.  Everything means something.  A higher risk or this, a lesser chance of that.  I resolved to Google this asap at home.

So, it turns out that it is possible to have fraternal twins share a placenta, but the odds are are like one in a billion. One of the defining characteristics or fraternal twins is two placentas.   There have been a couple documented cases of sharing, but it pretty much doesn't happen. (Check out the New England Journal of Medicine for more info on that juicy tidbit.)  I'd like to think that I'm beyond average, but there are only two or three documented cases, so I'm not going to hold my breath.

There is another possibility, which is that the little fertilized eggs implanted themselves really closely together, and the two placentas grew so close that they fused, and even though there is still two, it looks like only one (picture on the top right).

So, I still have a chance to have my girl.  The scary thing is, though, my doctor didn't say "two fused placentas".  She clearly said "one placenta".  And one placenta only occurs in identical twins.  So, you can see where I'm going with this...two boys.

Really, the only way to know is to have another ultrasound.  I don't have one scheduled now, but I'm seeing the twin specialist OB at the end of January, so hopefully he'll send me for one, or clarify the placenta thing.  Nothing to do now but wait.  In the meantime, I'm only buying things in unisex colors.