For nearly every woman (myself included), one of the first thoughts after discovering she’s pregnant—right after is this real? and when will my baby born? and is the baby healthy—is, will I be having a boy or a girl? Prior to learning we were having twins, I had a strong feeling I was pregnant with a girl. I also thought I wanted to wait until delivery to find out.
After discovering that I was carrying more than one baby, I was done with surprises with this pregnancy and decided I would like to learn the gender as soon as we could. (This was much to Luke’s relief, because he was never on board with my plan to wait.)
There was the potential to learn the babies’ genders along with the results of our Harmony Blood Test at 12 weeks. However, this test only has the ability to determine whether or not you are carrying a boy, which gets complicated with twins because you can’t know how many of the babies are boys. In fact, our results did come back saying “boy” but we knew these were not at all accurate: I could be carrying one or two boys, or they could both be girls and the “boy” DNA could be coming from the triplet we lost around 7 weeks. So we put little stock in those blood results and knew we’d have to wait for our next ultrasound for definitive answers.
When we went in for an ultrasound last Monday (at 15 weeks), we knew it might be the big day. And after a fairly thorough ultrasound, during which we saw our perfectly healthy twins, their precious heads positioned right next to each other, both our doctor and his nurse assured us they were 100% confident about the gender of each baby. We asked Dr. Seeker to write the genders down in an envelope for us to take home; I definitely didn’t want to do a big gender reveal party, but Luke and I preferred not to learn such momentous news in a sterile doctor’s office.
After the appointment, while Charleston was still being watched by Luke’s sister, we headed to Starbucks to open our envelope. My heart was racing and I was too nervous to read the results, so I passed the envelope over to Luke and asked him to open it. Luke tore open the envelope and stared down at the paper for seconds that felt like hours. When I saw the giant grin spread across his face, I knew exactly what he would say. “We got one of each!”
I don’t have the words to express the incredible joy I experienced in that moment. In fact, other than the first time I got to hold Charleston after his birth, I don’t know if I’ve ever felt such a jolt of unadulterated happiness and peace. A BOY AND A GIRL!
From the day I knew that I would be having twins, my wish (that I’d hardly dared to utter aloud) had been for “one of each.” Of course, the babies’ health was far more important than their genders, but the deepest desire of my heart was to have a daughter and one more son. Charleston has shown me the joys of mothering a son, and I couldn’t bear the thought of never having another boy, and yet I wanted to experience mothering a daughter, too. I’d selfishly prayed that God would bring this dream to life, and He has!
We shared the news with Charleston last Thursday, and though he had been telling us over the last few weeks that he wanted two sisters, he was very excited to learn that he is getting a sister AND a brother. (His first word when he saw the pink and blue balloons we used to share the news were, “It’s both?!”) Over the past couple of years, whenever we would talk about having another baby and would ask Charleston whether he would rather have a brother or a sister, he would always insist he was going to have both. His words are now proving prophetic. At the time, I joked that he was jinxing me into having boy/girl twins, but now that that’s our reality, I can’t imagine it any other way.
God has been so incredibly kind to us throughout this pregnancy. First, in blessing us with not just one but TWO healthy, growing babies, and now with answering our prayer for both a boy and a girl. For years, I’ve assumed I would never have a daughter, as if this was somehow my punishment for years of body hatred and disordered eating. In a way, this news is redeeming that aspect of my story along with the pain of our infertility journey. God is so incredibly good and His plans for our family are proving so much more beautiful than I ever could have asked or imagined. We are so very blessed.
