Extra Special Boy

The Beginning

In 2005, after living apart from each other for the greater part of three years, my husband, who's Active Duty Military, our three boys, and I, moved to Kansas. We settled in, not knowing how drastic a change we were in for.

Kansas itself is different from anywhere I've ever lived. It's not all flat and wheat fields. Plenty of those grace our fair State, but, where we live, it's hilly, green, and gorgeous. The skies seem to stretch all the way to enternity on a bright Summer's day. Then the heat hits! That's a different story all together.

So, in February, we settled in to our new Prairie home nestled in the Flint Hills of Kansas. What a sight!

As God's humor is hysterical, He saw fit to grace us with another pregnancy less than three months after moving.  

I went in for what I thought was my eleven weeks check up. The nurse couldn't hear the heartbeat. My heart skipped a beat. Two excruciating hours later (in reality, I only waited about thirty minutes,  but it felt that long), I was waiting for her to come perform an ultrasound. I'd been blessed so far to have never miscarried a child. Not once. I was scared out of my skin.

She came in, squirted the coldest jelly I've ever felt on my abdomen, and proceeded. What she found would change our lives forever.

TWINS!

I was pregnant with twins. The doctor came in and talked to me for a few minutes. Apparently multiples are considered to be a complicated pregnancy (boy did I figure out why), and I would not be followed by the nurse practitioner but a doctor. She encouraged me to get in touch with my husband. I found out later he was on lock down and couldn't come to the hospital.

I had to hold off telling his mom, who was visiting, and my very anxious friends, what was going on, because hubby deserved to be the first one to know.

Two months later, I went for another ultrasound. We had at least six during this pregnancy; not uncommon for twins or military to have so many. We were told we were having two boys. We already had three, but we were ecstatic.

Fast forward 7 months-ish. My husband's imminent deployment to Iraq was almost upon us, and I was placed on bedrest with 3 boys under the age of eight at home.

We went to Topeka, about an hour away, for a Perinatology appointment. The tech, and I don't remember her name, was very nice and, because the babies were big, said it might be hard to tell, but she was pretty sure one of them was a girl. My husband would finally have his little girl!

Less than four weeks later, he was gone. I joked that I hoped it snowed the day he left so he'd appreciate the warmer climate. God thought it would be funny too, because we had about six inches that day!