Our Double Blessing!

It truly is amazing how your whole life can change over night. Just a month ago, I was expanding my wings. I was flying to new heights and my plans for the future were clearer than ever. My life was perfect. I felt like I'd done so much hard work for years and was finally ready to make it fruitful. Both of my children as far as I am concerned are nothing short of perfect. They are healthy and adorable and mostly obedient and life is predictable. They would both be in school in the fall. The baby days were finally over and freedom was right at my finger tips. Golden. Why would I do anything to mess with a perfectly flawless situation?!

Bryan and I had always imagined 3 little children, but the timing was never exactly right for that 3rd child and after a pretty devastating miscarriage 2 years ago, I emotionally decided to be done. 

Now don't get me wrong....in an ideal world, I would already have 5 kids. I would live close to home or in a commune on some land with my best friends and all their kids and live the hard core mom life because as you can tell from my relationship with Catie and Lily, I am obsessed with being a mother. I am so in love with my children and I think being a mom is so rewarding. I love babies. I love children. I love big families. Unfortunately, being military....I just decided Oh well! That life is not for me. Catie, Lily, and baby #3 who is in heaven were all surprises. If I were to have planned any of them, none of them would have been here. haha.

How in the world does someone get pregnant 4 times by accident? Well, let's just say that my husband and I are EXTREMELY careful and few times we haven't been.....well.....BAM, babies were conceived....even if it was nowhere near time for me to conceive on the calendar. Apparently the two of us are very compatible for the making of babies. :)

This most recent pregnancy is the MOST shocking though. As you can read from a blog post earlier this year, my female hormones have been off. My last period was last summer so it had been about 6 months. I had something called hypothalamic amenorrhea which many athletes and fit women get because of overtraining and low body fat. In essence you stop ovulating even though your ovaries are perfectly fine and you stop menstruating. If you don't ovulate, you can't get pregnant. Here's the story on that.
http://nostrainnogain.blogspot.com/2013/01/hormonal-homeostasis.html

Several months ago, I felt convicted about bringing myself to this imbalance and decided to commit to restoring hormonal balance. It meant for me to train a bit less hard, eat to heal and nourish, and find time to relax. And I did EXACTLY that. Many of you who follow me on Facebook or who are friends with me have witnessed this first hand. It has been a truly amazing experience. For 3 months, I ate healing wholesome, REAL, raw foods. I ate a completely alkaline diet. I quit counting calories. I made all my food fresh. I stayed away from everything toxic even down to getting rid of the gum. I also felt truly relaxed. No pressure. Now, I had always felt pretty awesome, but eating THIS way made me feel like I could FLY. 

I had an intuition that things were getting back in balance, and JUST out of curiosity...when I went home for Christmas, I decided to get one of those ovulation kits. It was NOT to see when I was fertile. I just wanted to follow my cycle for a whole month to see if I would ever ovulate because if I did this would mean that things were working again. I did this for 3 weeks straight (missed a day here and there) but NOTHING. No ovulation. So one day my husband and I were careless in the middle of January. 3 days later I decided to take one of those tests again and lo and behold I was ovulating. 

I was elated!!!! I was a woman again!!!!! I felt like my body was a health experiment and I had found the formula. What I was doing was working!!! But I ran to my husband and said...."Stay away from me because I could get pregnant right now." And we did JUST that. Those tests say you can get pregnant within 2 days after seeing those lines. We messed up 3 days prior, so surely we were fine! Over the next week or 2 I twiddled my thumbs and waited to have another period. I know. Weird. I was excited to have one.

I started to feel like I was PMSing....you know, I had all those symptoms. But the period never came. The panic set in. It was about time for me to get my hormones tested from the dr again anyway so I scheduled an appointment, got my blood work done, and they called back and said, "Well, Mrs. Strain....it looks like your hormones are working GREAT now cause you're pregnant!"

WHHHAAAAATTTTT?????????? 

I had this overwhelming mixture of awe, confusion, shock, fear, and excitement. I was NOT ready for this. This changed everything!

They scheduled me for an ultrasound right away when I told them that my last period was in July of 2012. They were like, "GO NOW!" They wanted to date me even though I knew how far along I was. I delayed going to get an ultrasound actually. I had the number. I could schedule the appointment, but I wanted to wait. I didn't want to go in until I knew they could see a baby and a heartbeat. I've been to an ultrasound where they didn't find the heartbeat because I'd lost the baby. I didn't want to experience that again. I wanted to know for sure that I had a real live baby in there before I started telling people too. 

In the meantime, I started showing really early. And I was getting SICK!!!!!! I was breaking out like a 13 year old, I was having raging headaches, and my breasts went from a D to a G!!! I was reeling with pregnancy symptoms. I was feeling pretty miserable. I had to start telling a few people because I was showing and it was getting pretty obvious. They were all like YOU're having a BOY because I didnt get sick with my girls. I felt awesome with them. It did come up a few times in a very "funny" way that it could be twins, but as far as I was concerned that was the WORST thing that could happen to me and I didn't have to worry about that because it doesn't run on my mothers side of the family and I am the LAST person that God would give two babies at once to.

This was me at just 5 weeks before I even knew I was having twins. haha

Well, I finally went in for an ultrasound on February 13. I had my sweet little Lily with me holding my hand. As I lay there on the table and the tech started doing her thing, I proceeded to say these EXACT words, "Ok. Please just tell me you see a heart beat. But whatever you do, do NOT tell me you see more than one." And then I laughed. 

She says, "Do twins run in the family?" 

I said, "No."

She then turns the screen toward me and says, "Well, now they do!" 

Twins at 7 weeks

And there they were.....2 babies. 2 heartbeats. 

I fell apart. I saw my whole life flash before my eyes. And when Lily said, "Mom, that's a lot of babies!" I wept. I told the tech I wasn't ready. This couldn't be happening! I then went into shock and laughed...A LOT! When I told Bryan, his response were 2 small but powerful words, "Holy ______!"

After we let it sink in and realized that this was now our situation, we fell in love with the idea. We saw the beautiful but scary and exhilarating reality of it. This wasn't our plan, but it was God's plan. He has saved these babies for us. And I almost feel like I'm getting back the 3rd one I lost 2 years ago as weird as that sounds. Bryan and I get 2 more children. THIS is AWESOME! When I look at the two girls I have now, why in the world would I not want more kids?! When all the logic and the fear of having 2 babies at once leaves, I am left with the simple and beautiful truth that there are 2 lives growing inside of me. These are my children. They are alive. They growing. I am their mother. Their well being depends on me and I have given myself over to that reality. My priorities are now to ensure their health and livelihood to the best of my ability. 

That leads me to my next fear. I am terrified of having an unhealthy child. I am doing all the right things and taking very good care of my body, but I know that at some level there is nothing I can do but trust God. I know SO many healthy women who lost babies or had babies with health issues. We can only do the best we can to ensure the health of our children, but for the most part, the health and condition of our children is in the hands of God and I have to be prepared for any scenario. 

From what they can see from my ultrasound, the babies are sharing a sac which most likely means that my egg split and they will be identical. Its crazy that one egg can become two babies and those two babies can develop perfectly. It is WILD.
The Dr's say my babies are not genetic twins, they are miracle twins. :) I like that.

The other possible issue is the lack of a membrane between the two babies. They didn't see one at the first 2 ultrasounds so I will be seeing a perinatologist in the next few weeks for a high resolution ultrasound. What does it mean for there to be no membrane? Well, it means that they could be sharing the same amniotic fluid. They will not be separated from each other so they can swim around each other and their cords can get tangled. There is only a 50% survival rate for these kinds of twins and they only happen in 1 and 65,000 twin pregnancies. It is very rare. 

The good news is....they saw 2 yolk sacs which is almost ALWAYS indicative of a membrane, so I am trusting that they will find one and that my babies will be fine. With that said, please keep my babies in your prayers. Because they are not fraternal, there is a higher risk for them anyway. When twins share a sac, they also share a placenta. SO my goal is to eat and nourish my body so they can receive maximum nutrition from my one placenta. 

Nonetheless, what we know RIGHT now is that these babies are healthy today. They have strong heart beats and they are swimming around like happy little nuggets. I am about 9 weeks pregnant, so anything can unfold at this point. I know I'm not in the clear, but i do know that God is good. And when I think of the worst possible case scenario, I'm STILL ok, because there is STILL heaven. I have no reason to fear or lose hope. 

I am excited for this journey and I can't wait to share it with you all!!!!