The best $21.90 per month I've ever spent

I know I talk a pretty confident talk on this blog... debating how to deliver my twins, shopping for a minivan, planning construction on our loft to make two bedrooms for the babies. But really, every day I worry -- are they still okay in there? I'm able to think abstractly about two lives that will be joining our family in the spring, but I'm so terrified of losing one or both of them that I can't buy a single baby item. Even the super cute peanut-butter-and-jelly matching twin onesies I saw online.

Well, it's the fear and the knowledge that I'd never get this song out of my head again:



Finally, my salvation has arrived, contained in one small white box sent from BabyBeat. My rental at-home doppler showed up on Thursday. Happy happy joy joy!

I used one while pregnant with Bean, and it calmed my nerves more than I can even say. This time I ordered a cheaper version, it doesn't have a recording feature like the last one. Already, these twins are getting the shaft. But DH suggested we just copy the file of Bean's heartbeat two times and call it a day. Sounds good to me.

On Thursday night, I was nervous to try it for the first time. The guidelines say you can usually hear the heartbeat starting at 10-12 weeks, and I was about 11 1/2. I made myself promise not to freak out if I couldn't find one. (Yeah, right.)

Thank goodness, it was relatively easy to find one of the heartbeats. We didn't calculate the rate because we were too lazy to count and multiply, but it sounded beautiful anyway. Both the manual and my RE advised me not to be concerned about finding the second heartbeat, as it's hard to do with twins, even for experienced doctors. I gave a quick search, came up with nothing, and decided to take one as a good sign and just go to bed. The half Unisom I took with my B6 vitamin (to help with nausea) rendered that not a problem whatsoever.

Last night, I easily found the first heartbeat, just where it had been the day before. And then I searched a little more carefully for the second one. Experienced doctors can eat it, because lo and behold, on the other side of my belly was another heartbeat with a distinctly different rate.

So as of Friday night at 9:30 pm, I am still pregnant with twins. AWWWW YEAH.

I highly recommend to anyone who is a paranoid neurotic concerned preggo like I am, consider renting a doppler when you near the end of your first trimester. Not everyone likes them, but those people are completely wrong. With Bean, I signed up for three months with BabyBeat. No tax, no shipping. If you keep it longer, they just bill your credit card for at the same monthly rate until you send it back (again in the same box, no shipping). And this time, I got a 5% discount for being a repeat customer. Can I get another AWWWW YEAH?

I actually enjoy listening to their heartbeats more than I like ultrasounds. Maybe it's because I don't have some random ultrasound tech all up in my lady business, watching the kiddos on a TV screen halfway across the room. I feel more connected to them, just the four of us (me, DH, and the twinklets) laying in our bed, hearing the whooshing of their tiny hearts before turning off the light and falling asleep.

Priceless.