Mom Relaxes on Couch With Son and Bump—4 Days Later, Life Changes Forever

Newsweek

a day ago

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A couple was preparing to welcome a new baby into their home, not realizing mom was actually carrying twins.
Emmy Quintana, 29, lives in Utah with her husband, Alexander, 30, their three-year-old son Artemis, and their newest arrivals, twins Micah and Finnick, aged four months.
For months, Quintana and her husband were preparing their lives to welcome a sibling for Artemis, and while Quintana had "always wanted and prayed for twins," they assumed they were expecting just one baby.
"I would joke around about me having twins to my husband, but he didn't think it was funny," she told Newsweek. "Looking back, it is definitely obvious that what I was feeling was not normal. My baby bump started showing really early, and I felt the baby kick weeks before I had with my first pregnancy. Everything was way more sensitive. It felt like there was so much more weight on my hips way earlier on."
Emmy Quintana and her young son, before she learned she was expecting twins.
Emmy Quintana and her young son, before she learned she was expecting twins.
Instagram @emmypickle
Despite this, the assumption of one baby lasted all through the pregnancy, until four days before Quintana gave birth, when the couple received the shock news that she was, in fact, carrying twins.
Their story has now been seen by hundreds of people, after the mom-of-three shared what happened to her Instagram account, @emmypickle.
In a video posted on July 17, with 897 likes, Quintana relaxes on the couch with her young son and their pet cat.
And while it seems like a normal family snapshot, she wrote: "She doesn't know it yet but there is an additional baby in her belly waiting to be discovered just 4 days before being born."
Instagram users were awed, one calling it a "wonderful surprise," and asking: "Did you have to go out and buy a second car seat and such? Did you even have time to do so with so few days before they arrived?"
"The cat was telling you all alone," one commenter said, pointing out how the pet was lying across Quintana's stomach in the clip. "My cat was the most accurate pregnancy test ever. She predicted both my younger siblings and my kids too."
Another shared their own story: "I also didn't know I was carrying twins until I went into labor at 35.4 weeks. Had one ultrasound at 18-20 weeks—saw one baby!"
In Quintana's case, she explained they "opted to not do any ultrasounds this pregnancy, which resulted in us never knowing it was twins til later on."
"I remember hearing somewhere that your second pregnancy is way different than your first, because your body knows what to expect. Looking back at all my symptoms and the way I was feeling, it was definitely because I had twins—but at the time, I thought it was just different because it wasn't my first pregnancy."
It was only when Quintana reached 35 weeks and began "measuring slightly ahead" that her midwife suggested she could have extra amniotic fluid, or perhaps a larger-than-average baby.
And at her next appointment, where she was measuring even further ahead, they "finally talked about the real possibility of there being two babies and how dramatically that could change what birth looks like.
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"We agreed to go and get an ultrasound finally, so that both my birth team and we were prepared if it was twins." And just minutes in, her tech confirmed it—there were two.
A gender blood test had already shown that Quintana was having a boy, and they initially "didn't worry about getting any more baby stuff" as they had plenty left from their firstborn.
But after the shock twin reveal, "we scrambled to get a small registry together for the extra items we suddenly needed. We have a great support system and we were luckily able to get everything soon afterwards," she said.
But things moved quickly—as just three days later, Quintana was diagnosed with preeclampsia, a condition dangerous for both mother and baby, and she was immediately brought in to be induced.
"We went from thinking we had one baby and a few more weeks of being pregnant, to having my twin boys in my arms just four days later."
In 2023, there were 110,393 twin births in the United States, at a rate of 30.7 per 1,000 live births. Triplets were far less common, at 2,505—and there were just `148 quadruplet or higher order births that year, according for the National Center for Health Statistics.
Now, with the twins having arrived safely, Quintana has "no qualms about how everything happened. I think God had a plan and maybe He wanted me to have peace during the pregnancy—up until the ultrasound at least!
"I'm a pretty laid back person and don't get anxious often so I loved getting the surprise and just looked at everything as a blessing."
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