We went for our 22-week ultrasound on July 7. The verdict? One happy, healthy, wiggly little baby girl.
She's kinda cute, don't you think?
The ultrasound technician spent over an hour examining Deborah's belly from just about every angle possible, checking the length of feet, measuring the circumference of the head, checking the amount of amniotic fluid, peeking at structures in the brain, checking other parts of Deborah to make sure everything was OK.
All that was on July 7. Three weeks ago. So why am I only posting it now?
That's about how long it took to start feeling normal about it. (New readers to the blog may not be aware of a piece I wrote back in March. If you haven't seen that, go read that first.)
You see, we went in, excited to see the twins. We came out, shocked and numb, wondering what happened. Where was the other one? What happened to having twins? We were so sure... As I described it to a friend later, "One perfectly formed little girl and a lot of awkward questions."
We stayed up pretty late talking through those questions. Were we wrong? In a way, that's the easiest one to say, but also one of the most troubling — after all these years, we'd like to think we know God's voice when we hear it. Was God wrong? Pfft. What if it wasn't God? Scary. Don't you recognize the voice of a friend? And if it wasn't God, then who...? Was it meant for this pregnancy? We were so sure... but what if it wasn't? Are we supposed to have more kids yet? (Five kids?) Is that even possible? Don't they tie your tubes after three C-sections? ...we wrestled with those questions for days, weeks.
Finally, we came to a conclusion that left us with both faith and sanity. There are two possibilities:
- The plan has changed. We may never know why.
- The plan hasn't changed. Things could get very interesting.
And one question lingers in the air:
What will I do next time I feel like God is telling me something?
About two weeks before the ultrasound, Deborah says a thought kept straying across her mind: Will you still trust Me if it's not twins?
I had to think about that one for a while. But I think I do. I think I do.
So for now, we sit back, and rethink our plans. We don't seem to need a bigger house at this point. The extra things we've accumulated can be stored. The van... I'm not sure. Three is a crowd with car seats, even in a Cadillac, and we do often like to bring others with us. But now it's more of a want than a need. We have the money, and we have other debts burning holes in our pockets, but somehow the best course of action at this point seems to be to wait.
1 comment:
I wanted to say this after your previous post on the subject, but didn't: life isn't pool. We don't generally get to plan what God's going to give us, and if we could, it wouldn't necessarily be a good idea: his plans are invariably better than ours, even if it doesn't always seem that way at the time.
And no, they don't tie off your tubes after any certain number of sections, at least, not these days. Also, they no longer require all subsequent births to be caesarian just because you've had one that way in the past. As far as I know, there's no particular medical reason you'd have to stop after four, five, six, or even seven children. The age of the mother is a larger factor, actually.
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