Chapter Ten
"C'mon, people are tryin' to get in and out of that door." Nick swept his toddler into his arms, taking him away from the door that he had been hanging on. He took him back round the corner to the waiting room, where Greg was still reading through his baby book. Doctor Jordan decided to move up his appointment to Thursday, rather than Friday, so he could get his blood test done quicker. The boys still weren't showing any signs of the dreaded chicken pox, but Greg's doctor said it was better to be safe than sorry.
Jackson didn't have preschool today though, so they had to bring him with them. He hadn't slept much through the night and he had skipped his nap so he could sleep in his Granddad's car later, but he wasn't acting as though he was tired. He hadn't stopped running around since they got there, starting to annoy some of the other Moms waiting for their own appointment.
"It's wasn't too long ago, that we were sat in here, waitin' to see a picture of you on the monitor." Nick pointed his son's attention towards the board beside the receptionists desk that was covered with baby pictures. "Your picture is up there somewhere."
"Third one up from the bottom. On the right." Greg answered, without even glancing up.
Nick followed the younger man's directions, smiling as their baby boy's picture was exactly where he said it was. Jackson wasn't really interested though. He arched his back off his father's chest, whining until his father let him down again. "Stay by me. We'll be called in soon." His toddler moved himself out of the man's reach, grabbing a children's book that was set down beside a pregnant lady opposite them. He hurried over to Greg with the book, hiding behind his legs as Nick reached out for him again. "You're a little monster."
"No." Jackson shook his head from side to side, giggling as he moved round the other side of his Papa's chair, even further out of Nick's reach.
"You a'ight there, G? You're really quiet... for a change."
"I'm fine." Greg absently nodded, flipping over to the next page.
"Good." Nick smiled at him, leaning on his knees as he saw a little hand beneath his seat. Jackson had crawled beneath their chairs, still holding the book in his other hand. His father grabbed the braces of his denim dungarees as he crawled past him, pulling him out to where he could see him.
"Mr Sanders." A nurse finally called out his name.
"Greg, that's us." His husband swept their child into his arms, leaving the children's book behind on their chair. Greg slotted a bookmark into place, before he pushed himself to his feet, feeling nervous about seeing their baby for the first time. The previous scan didn't really count, because all he could see was a gummy bear looking shape in a big empty space.
"Hi, Greg. Nick. And is this Jackson? Hello." Doctor Jordan greeted the three of them, closing the door behind them. "Sit anywhere. So, baby number three. Are we nervous?"
"Yes." The two of them answered together.
The Doctor smiled at the two of them, ushering Greg over to the bed in the office, so could start with the usual routine tests, including the blood tests to tell if he was immune to chicken pox or not. Nick took a seat on the chair by the desk, lifting Jackson onto his lap. His toddler didn't want to sit down though, he wanted to explore. He struggled in his father's arms until he was forced to let him down, only allowed as far as Nick's arm could reach, as he still had hold of his braces.
"How far along do you think you are now?" Doctor Jordan asked, taking the younger man's blood pressure.
"Um... Nicky?" He looked to his husband for help.
"Twenty weeks exactly." His husband reported, bending down as Jackson dropped to the floor, trying to crawl underneath the doctor's desk in front of them. He pulled him back towards him, getting a giggle out of the toddler. Nick smiled at him, feeling as though it had been months since he last spent any real time with his son. He picked him up from pre-school, occasionally put him to bed, but he hadn't seen him during the day since the moment he took the day shift job at the lab.
"Alright, sounds good." Doctor Jordan finished listening to his patient's heart, helping him up off the bed. "Let's get you on the table in the next room for your scan. I'm just gonna get these bloods sent off." He opened the door to the adjoining room for them, before he hurried away to find one of his nurses.
Greg followed his husband and child through to the next room, climbing onto the paper the nurse in there had just set up. "Do you wonna just loosen your jeans a little?" She suggested, rolling his sweatshirt up his chest, so his baby bump wasn't obstructed by any clothing. "This might be a little cold." The nurse squeezed the bottle of cold gel onto his stomach, letting Doctor Jordan by her as soon as he returned.
"Can you get the lights?" Doctor Jordan pulled some glasses out of his white coat, putting them on his face, before he started fiddling with the ultrasound machine in front of him. "Alright, are we ready?"
"Yeah." Greg looked round at Nick, reaching out for his hand to hold. Jackson was finally sitting still on his father's lap, curious to know what was going on in front of him. "We don't want to know what we're having." The younger man quickly warned his doctor, getting a smile out of the man.
"I like it better when they're a surprise." The man agreed, turning the monitor a little more, so Greg didn't have to strain his neck to see. "Let's see how the little one is doing then shall we?" He ran the device through the cold gel on Greg's stomach, bringing up the familiar picture on the monitor. "Did you see that?" He looked round at the two father's, getting a confused look out of the two of them. As soon as the image on the screen started to focus, it revealed the familiar shape of a baby's head, except it was doubled. "There's two of them."
"What?" Greg frowned at him, remembering that his previous scan only revealed the one. "Are you sure?"
"Bones appear white, soft tissue is this grey speckled area and the black around them is all the amniotic fluid." Doctor Jordan explained to them, moving the device a little lower to see if they could see it for themselves. "You see here this baby is laying on its back. There's it's head," He dragged his mouse across the monitor, pointing out the baby's facial features. "The arms either side of it here and the legs down here. And just above it here, you can see another head. You see the heart beat there?" He stopped to allow them to watch the flickering of one baby's heartbeat.
"Two babies?" Nick clutched his son a little tighter as he leant forwards on his chair to try and see it more clearly.
"Two babies." The man nodded, smiling as Greg still had a deer in headlights expression on his face. "Your second baby here is lying on its side against their sibling. You see the long string of pearls here? That's their spine. Looks like they're sucking their thumb." He angled it just right, so they could see the baby's hand reached up to it's mouth. "Can you see this ones legs moving? Looks like they're giving their brother or sister a good ol' kick there."
Nick chuckled softly, gently shaking Greg's hand to make sure he hadn't spaced out on them. "Can you tell if they're together, like identical twins?"
"They're separate. If you look really closely, you can you see a thin dividing membrane between them." He tried to get them a clear picture, but the baby's continued to move. "It looks very thin, so they could be fraternal or identical. I'm seeing one placenta down here." He ran his finger across it on the screen. "There's the placenta that attaches baby to you. It's very close to the bottom of your uterus, where the first baby we saw is lying."
"We only saw one at the ten week scan." Nick continued to ask the questions, as his husband was still in shock.
"Sometimes a second fetus is overlooked. They're so small at that stage that if you're not looking for two, you generally stop looking after you've found the one." He didn't do the scan himself, so he didn't know how the second fetus was overlooked. "This baby here would be considered twin A. They generally name them as the closest one to the cervix, but we'll go with the one at the bottom. And twin B would be the one up here sucking it's thumb. This certainly explains why you look much further along in your pregnancy than twenty weeks."
"Can you see them?" The Texan stood his stood up on his lap, holding him steady as he tried to get a better look at the screen in front of them.
"He eat, Dada." Jackson pointed towards the screen.
"Yeah, the baby's swallowing the amniotic fluid." Doctor Jordan informed the three year old. "See down here inside the baby, you can see their tummy, because it's full of the black amniotic fluid." He showed them all the stomach of twin A, before he started to take some measurements of the two of them to make sure that they were growing right and sharing the space inside Greg's uterus. He took a few minutes to measure each of their heads, check their facial features, spines, abdominal organs and things, before he checked their little hearts. "I found the second placenta, and it does look like your twins are fraternal. That's when they're created from separate eggs that were fertilised at the same time."
"Hey Greg, you alright?" Nick supported his son against him, climbing to his feet to try and see into the younger man's eyes. His eyes were slightly glazed over with tears as he studied the images on the monitor in front of him. He had been scared of getting twins the last time with Jackson as he got so huge so quickly, but the thought hadn't even crossed his mind this time around.
"Probably just a lot to take in." The nurse sympathised with him, flipping the lights back on as soon as it was over. She gently wiped away the goo from Greg's stomach, helping him to re-button his jeans up, before he got up.
"Are they both healthy?" Nick asked, adjusting Jackson against his hip.
"Yep, they're a nice healthy size. Strong little hearts."
The doctor continued to talk to Nick about their twins and what to expect, while Greg examined the images that had been printed out for him. He couldn't take his eyes off them, barely hearing anything that they were saying about the twins. He followed Nick out to the car once their appointment was over, taking a seat in the passenger seat of the car, still looking at the images he had in his hands.
"Are you okay?" Nick climbed into the driver's seat, reaching over his partner for his seatbelt. He plugged it in for him, before he covered his hand over the pictures he was looking at. "Hey, where you been? Everythin' okay?"
"Yeah... I was just... thinking."
"About the twins?" Nick leant closer, pressing a playful kiss to the younger man's lips. "We'll have to get you one of those multiples pregnancy books. We'll need two of everythin' this time around too. What?" He caught Greg rolling his eyes. "Aren't you excited about this?"
"Yeah... but... it's still really early."
"Didn't you hear what the doc said? Twins are considered full term a little earlier than a single baby. He said they could come out anywhere from thirty six weeks to thirty eight. That's not that far away if you think about it." He pressed his lips to the younger man's cheek, getting a small smile out of him. "You ready to go pick up your big brother, Colt?" He glanced through the seats at their toddler in the back.
"It's only two o' clock, Nick. He doesn't finish until half three." Greg pointed out the time to him. "We could go and get something for dinner. Dad's coming over and we've only got fish sticks at the house."
"Alright," Nick strapped himself in, before he started up the car. He was really excited about having another baby with Greg, but now that he knew that they were expecting twins, excitement didn't even cover what he was experiencing.
After a quick shopping trip, they collected Colt from school, before Nick took them all home. He set the boys up with a DVD in the front room to keep them busy, joining Greg in the kitchen, where the younger man was still gazing at the images they had gotten from the doctors. He couldn't believe it himself that he had been carrying two babies for the last twenty weeks and didn't even know it.
"Four is only one more than three." He wrapped his arms around the younger man's waist, pressing a kiss to his neck. "You managed to control six toddlers at Jackson's last birthday party. This is just two babies. Only one more than what you dealt with last time."
"It's double everything though. Diaper changes. Feeding times. Trying to get them to sleep. Dressing them. All the laundry. Spit up..." Leaning back into his husband's embrace, Greg smiled widely as he was actually excited about all the bad things he had just listed. "Nick, are you scared?"
"No, and you don't have anythin' to be scared of either. Go sit down, I'll make dinner." He pressed a kiss to the younger man's cheek, noticing the bruise again. He had completely forgotten about that, reminding him of how horrible he had been to Greg.
"We should start packing." The younger man pointed out to him, leaving Nick in charge of the kitchen, while he made his way upstairs. He need to pack bags for the boys for their weekend away with their grandparents, as well as a bag each for him and Nick, for their own weekend away at Nick's folks ranch.
He started with the boys clothes first, neatly folding a few of Jackson's t-shirts into their suitcase. He stopped as he found one of his son's old t-shirts, barely bigger than his hand, making him really emotional again. He held the small t-shirt tightly against his chest, starting to blubber for a reason that didn't even make any sense to himself.
"Greg, your Dad's here!" Nick called up the stairs a few minutes later. He kept his father in law talking in the kitchen for a few minutes, before he made his way upstairs to find Greg. There was no sign of him in their room, so he made his way through to the boys room, finding the younger man sat against Colt's bed, crying into a baby grow he had found in the closet. "Baby... what's the matter?" He knelt down in front of him, seeing a glimpse of Greg's teary eyes, before the younger man pulled him towards him for a hug. "Aww honey, what is it?" He couldn't help but chuckle softly, clutching his partner tightly in his arms.
"This..." Greg pulled back, raising the tear soaked baby grow from his lap.
"Jackson's old onesie?" Nick pressed a kiss to the middle of his forehead, giving him a smile as he gently wiped away the tears from his eyes. "You're goin' through your teary phase again, huh? When you were pregnant with Jackson, we were packin' to move in here and you were foldin' away all Colt's baby clothes. You cried for three hours straight." He reminded him with a chuckle.
"I told you to take that to your grave." Leaning forwards, Greg rested his head against Nick's shoulder, wishing he even knew what had set him off. "Four is a nice even number to have, isn't it? Better than three or six..."
"Are you still wigged out about that?"
"We found out less than an hour ago. I still time for adjustment." Greg defended himself, closing his eyes as his partner brushed his fingertips through his last remaining tears. "I feel like an idiot for crying now. I'm not a crier." He wiped his hands across both eyes, getting pulled into Nick's arms again for a hug. "I blame you. You've made me more emotional."
"I didn't make you emotional. You've got loads of hormones in your body, that's makin' you even more emotional than usual. Nothin' to do with me."
"These babies have everything to do with you. But that's the best thing about them."
Thanks for reading, double dose of chapters since they're quite short. Might have chapter 11 done by the weekend. Please let me know what you thought.
~ Holly