Cheers to Our Journey with Artificial Twins
I won't forget sitting in Cathy's make shift office for the first time as she started the first of many Home Study meetings. She is our social worker and we love her dearly - she understands brokenness in families more than most, having worked with foster care and adoption for years. She shares with us love for Jesus and His redemption.
When she asked us if we were still pursuing fertility treatments and we said "No, but if we were to become pregnant again, we will not be stopping our adoption process," her response was one that has repeated itself in my mind a few times since it left her mouth. Mainly because in that moment, I had a feeling that what she said not to do, we would do...I had a feeling and secretly hoped it would become our crazy journey:
"I highly recommend you rethink that. Most adoption agencies won't let you continue in your adoption anyways, if pregnant. But read up on Artificial/Virtual Twinning. It is not recommended. Kids need their own spot in the birth order."
It was the first time we had heard of the term. "Artificial or Virtual Twinning." It is when you have two siblings, that are not biological, within 9 months of one another. There are very valid reasons not to artificially twin. Reasons like sharing the first-born-ness [or whatever the birth-order], attachment-process being interrupted, being compared to one another like twins without the "benefits" of being twins, among other things.
Little did I know I was pregnant in that moment.
But here we are. Our first born son [adopted] is a little over 4 months and I am due anytime between now and the next 3.5 weeks with our second born son. They will be about 5 months apart. In my minuscule and inexperienced brain, our first would be close to crawling. Boy was I wrong. Tandem carrying: here we come.
People often talk to me as if I am crazy and/or super woman. I may be crazy for some reasons, but I am certainly not super woman. From the get go of adding Sage to our family, I have had the constant knowledge that he will be an only-child for a very short time. This is very bitter sweet and I won't get into the giant emotions of it all right now..but you must know: THERE ARE SO MANY EMOTIONS. Moving on. Because I knew from the get go that Sage was an older brother at birth, it has made things fairly easy... in the sense that for the last 4+ months, I have told myself, "one baby is easy, let's just wait and see how two [5 months apart] goes."
And really, some babies sleep through the night at 3 months while others take 2.5 years. You never know how life will unfold when you have other humans living with you.
Honestly? I think most of you are super men and women. You have multiple children WHILE owning businesses and selling/making cool clothes on Etsy. You go to mom's groups with your hair done and you pump extra breast milk to donate to people like us. You own your own house. You are teachers and doctors and writers and things. You have full time jobs and full time hearts and full time lives. In my small and unimportant opinion, we all are living a crazy-town beautiful mess, mine simply looks different than yours.
Just like you, I need Jesus. I needed Jesus while we waited, I needed Jesus when we discovered we were pregnant [both times], I needed Jesus while we considered Sage's situation, I needed Jesus when we said YES, I needed Jesus when his Birth Mama said YES, I needed Jesus every single moment of every single day since then and I am sure as heck going to need Him when we have two little babies under 5 months that are not actual twins. They will be babies in two completely different developmental stages and it will be hard and tiring and sleepless...but this is what I was made for. This is my beautiful life. I was made to love and mama these boys, these little humans, these very real souls...I was made to break, pouring myself out and into them so that they can be filled up full and learn what it means to love others well. So that they can learn how to then break, pouring themselves out into others.
I was made to mama these boys just as you were made to mama yours.
And when I forget, because sleeplessness and screaming can magically erase your memory of Truth, I will depend on my pals to bring me coffee and tell me I'm doing what I was made to do. To remind me of Truths that these are the times I will miss and these boys are growing so fast right before our eyes and will too soon be adults.
Because my sweet artificial twins are not able to hold hands at this current time and I have yet to experience what this even-more-sleepless-joy filled-beautifulness is going to be like, I asked my friend Audrey to share a little bit about her journey with Almost Twins.
"I always say that this isn't the life that we would have planned because it is hard but We are so thankful that God chose us for the job. Also the one thing that I think God was really trying to emphasize in our lives is that we couldn't have done any of it without God. Not the adoption not the pregnancy. We tried the pregnancy before with medications and our own timing and it didn't work and all it got us was a lot of heart ache. And we learned early on once our second baby was home that we still can't do it without God. We couldn't do it without Him now and we can't do it without Him now even almost a year and a half later.
I always thought we would have twins! I dreamt of them! I even had a friend tell me that she thought God was preparing me for two at the same time. We were matched with Aria and at the very same moment God was working a miracle inside me. I was just barley pregnant. Possibly 4 days post conception and I had NO idea! We wouldn't find out we were pregnant for 2 more weeks. After bringing home Aria (our first) my belly grew as she grew. The two sweet girls lay side by side with only my connective tissue separating them. I felt one kicking me from the inside and one kicking me from the outside. Adelaide would climb up under my rib cage to get under Aria. This is how I came up with the term •almost twins" for my girls. They are as close to twins as they could get without being from the same belly. Their bond now is like non other! My first baby had so much love and excitement to meet her baby sister at only 5.5 months old. It was like she knew! She couldn't wait to get her hands on her!"
Cheers to our life long journey with artificial twins and the gift of children. This life is not my own, but His. And I need Him desperately.
