I’ll always remember our first ultrasound photo; a grainy image capturing two little blobs sitting side by side. It’s a moment forever engraved in my mind, a feeling I could never forget – the day we discovered we were pregnant with twins.
Three weeks earlier, we were at the doctor’s office and had just found out that we were expecting. Overloaded, mind swimming, we were in a state of shock. Pregnancy wasn’t part of our plan – at least, not yet. We had laid out a road map for our marriage and it didn’t include kids for another five years.
The next few weeks were spent in a fog, a blur of unbelief as I tried to ready myself to the fact that we were going to become parents. I was dealing with morning sickness, pregnancy hormones and felt guilty for not being as excited as I thought a new mom should be.
We were scheduled for an ultrasound at 8 weeks and I was slowly warming to the idea of a baby. Emphasis on a baby (as in one of them.)
My entire life, I’ve known that I would one day be a twin mom. Don’t ask me how (besides a gracious Heavenly Father who knew I needed a heads up on this one) but I’ve just always known.
And the problem is that I’ve never particularly liked twins; in my mind, there was nothing that sounded appealing about raising two at once. Growing up, I used to joke with my sister, “If I have twins. I’ll give you one!”
And so, the night before the ultrasound, I stood in my living room and prayed, “Father, I’m so overwhelmed at the prospect of having one, I definitely can’t handle two. At tomorrow’s appointment, PLEASE let there only be one baby in there.”
Given the circumstances, I look back on this prayer and cringe. I can only laugh at my feeble attempts to explain, to an omniscient God, what I thought was “best” for my life. I’m grateful that He didn’t listen to the emotional prayers of a new momma – a girl who didn’t understand the beautiful gift that was being offered. The goodness of His plans astound me and I am continually thankful for having been given the opportunity to carry my two little miracles.
The day of the appointment, I woke early to precisely measure and drink the recommended amount of water – only to promptly throw it all back up as we headed out the door. Chugging a litre of liquid in the car, I arrived at the clinic feeling nervous, excited, and more than a little waterlogged.
I was ushered into a room to change while Andreas was instructed to sit in the waiting area until they’d taken a few measurements. I laid on the bed as the technician zoomed around my belly with her wand; cold goop squishing against a stomach that didn’t even look pregnant.
“Do twins run in your family?”
Figuring this was a standard question, I simply shook my head. She moved the wand to a different location. “How do you feel about twins?”
“They’re my worst nightmare,” I quipped (bad time to try and be funny).
The technician looked at me in horror, “Well now, they’re not so bad. After all, they can play together and entertain each other.”
I nodded and shrugged, “Sure.”
With a frozen smile she turned the screen towards me. “Well… here’s Baby A,” she said, pointing at a dark spot on the screen, “And here is Baby B.”
Whoosh, all the air went out of my lungs as I stared at the screen, startled. This is what I’d always known was going to happen. This is what I’d been dreading and protesting so loudly for years. Twins.
But with all of the anxiety I’d experienced in the pregnancy thus far, this revelation caught my emotions off guard. These weren’t just twins; these twins were mine. In a blink, my fears dissipated. I was overcome with joy; joy that I had not previously felt during this pregnancy. It was instant love.
The ultrasound technician went to get Andreas from the waiting room. “We have a surprise for you,” she said with a grin. Andreas nodded thinking, “Surprise? It’s not a surprise. It’s a baby… That’s what we came here to see…”
The shock and joy on his face when he saw those two, fuzzy circles on the black and white screen echoed mine. Two of them.
Despite news that had the potential to make one feel more overwhelmed, we felt a surprising calm. I was immediately washed in the most amazing sense of peace and security. Even though our plans had disintegrated before our eyes and we had doubled our family size overnight, it somehow felt so right. It took twins to help us grasp just how much of a good thing this pregnancy was. God, in his infinite wisdom, knew that this unlikely gift was the very thing our family needed.
Oh, my dear, you are an amazing writer, and I’m LOVING these posts! I jump right over to read them whenever I see another one is up. I think of you often and thank you for sharing your precious story with us all. I can’t wait for the next “chapter”.