“Oh, my God,” I whispered.
“Yep, start prayin’ to Him because you’re so screwed.” He snickered. “Raising twins is going to be hard as hell.”
Stop talking.
I thought of Ryder, and my heart began to violently pound against my chest.
“Ryder,” I rasped. “Get ‘im in here. Sally too; she can read scans like the newspaper.”
Ash didn’t need to be asked twice; he left the room and went to get Ryder and Sally. It left me alone in the room with the monitor that was now dark because the Doppler wasn’t on my stomach anymore. Blank screen or not, I couldn’t look away from the monitor. My whole life was changing before me, and I was sickly excited about it.
“Twins,” I whispered aloud.
Can I really be that lucky?
Sally entered the room a few seconds before Ryder, and she went straight to the USG machine and repeated what Ash did. She gasped once or twice, and then took a shitload of measurements. The suspense was almost killing me.
“Well?” I said.
Sally looked at me with wide eyes. “Ash is right, Bran.”
“Oh, my God!” I whispered.
“Is there something wrong with the baby?” Ryder asked, the fear in his voice evident. “Ash said something to Sally, and she just took off back in here.”
I looked at my husband and found his eyes locked on mine. I shook my head in response to his question, my eyes misting with water.
“No.” I choked. “In fact, both babies are doin’ excellent.”
Ryder’s shoulders sagged with relief briefly before they tensed almost instantly when my words registered with him.
“Don’t play,” he warned. “I can’t take jokes like that.”
I smiled wide as tears began to splash onto my cheeks.
“I’m not playin’. We’re havin’ twins. Look.”
Sally pointed Baby A and Baby B out to us both, and before we knew it, the whole room was crying. Even Ash was discreetly rubbing at his eyes and calling us all crybabies, which made us laugh.
“I don’t know how it was missed at your twelve-week scan, Branna,” Sally said, dabbing her cheeks with a hanky.
“It was a brief scan with Taylor,” I said, feeling like I was floating. “And from what was pointed out to me, it did look like just one baby.”
“Maybe one twin was hiding behind the other,” Ash suggested. “That’s happened two other times this year when the mother’s had early scans.”
“Will they be like my brothers?” Ryder asked me.
“No, because your brothers are technically fraternal twins.”
Ryder blinked. “No, they’re identical.”
“They have different hair colour,” I said flatly. “Identical twins would have the same melanin levels, so they can’t have different hair colour.”
My husband frowned. “Branna, apart from their hair, they are the same. They literally have the same face.”
“I know that,” I assured him. “To the world they are identical, but in medical terms, they’d be classed as fraternal twins based on their hair colour alone.”
“How can they looked the exact same if they aren’t identical?” he questioned, unconvinced. “They don’t just look similar; they have the same everything just not the same hair.”
“They are just one of nature’s loopholes, I guess. They are the exact same but with different hair colour. I’m just sayin’ that accordin’ to science, they’d be classed as fraternal.”
Ryder whistled. “Never tell them that; they think they’re identical.”
“I won’t say a word.” I chuckled as I looked at the screen then at Sally. “I’m confident our babies are identical, but can you confirm it?”
Sally nodded. “They’re identical, honey.”
“How can you tell?” Ryder questioned as he took the seat next to the bed I was lying on and grabbed my hand, squeezing it tightly.
“Fraternal twins are like any other siblings; the only difference is they share a womb. Identical twins come from the same egg thus share the same DNA pattern. There is no membrane dividin’ your twins, and they’re sharin’ a placenta meanin’ they come from the same egg that has split,” Sally explained. “I’ve seen scans like this hundreds of times over the years, and this one is textbook for identical twins.”
Ryder exhaled a deep breath. “Can you tell their gender?”
“I can.” Sally hesitated as she glanced between us. “Branna is sixteen weeks and four days along, and they’re both in the perfect position for gender to be determined and confirmed. Would you like to know?”