Seeing this picture stirred up emotions and reflections back to the birth of my twins. The picture is of one of them. Though my memory retention isn’t as good as others, there are many details that I do remember. My wife’s pregnancy progressed along normally, except for some light spotting. Two months later, on a Thursday, my wife felt like she was having contractions. We were scheduled to attend birthing classes that night at the hospital, but instead we went to get checked to make sure everything was ok. There was a flurry of activity to attempt to stabilize things. After spending the night, we were informed that she would have to remain for the rest of the pregnancy. Over the next few days, I spent a lot of time at the hospital, but toward middle of the next week I did go to work some. That Friday morning, January 14th, 2000, I was at work and a little after 8:00 am received a call from the OB/GYN that I needed to get to the hospital, a 30+ minute drive away, and quickly departed, speeding much of the way.
Upon arrival I quickly donned the normal attire of hospital scrubs and headed to the OR for the emergency C-Section. My son was brought out first, followed by my daughter. At just over 26 weeks gestation, there was much to be concerned about as the chances of survival are lessened when born that early. There was a flurry of activity in the OR as teams of nurses and others hovered over each child to provide life support to stabilize and evaluate their conditions. I believe their weights were 2 lbs. 7 oz. and 2 lbs. 2 oz. Within minutes they were whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU), and I went to the recovery room to wait for my wife. It was a couple of days after that we had some time to think about names for the kids, and we chose Tyler and Rachel. Rachel was named after my wife’s mother, who passed away when my wife was 8 years old. We chose Tyler for our son's name.
Tyler’s stay in the NICU was 9.5 weeks, and Rachel’s 12 weeks. It wasn’t until about 2 weeks after their births that we were actually able to hold the kids in a special way knows as Kangaroo Care. (That’s Tyler below.)
While in the NICU, Rachel had heart surgery on my wife’s birthday. Rachel got very sick at one point and we weren’t sure if she was going to make it. For premature infants, it is common practice to conduct a cranial ultrasound at 10 days following birth and then just prior to discharge. Rachel’s scan didn’t show anything at day 10, but did show PVL just prior to discharge. It was at that point that we learned there would be a possibility that she would have Cerebral Palsy, though it was too early to know the impacts.
We are all faced with difficult circumstances that make or break us. I came across this quote the other night from Albert M Wills, Jr., and it has a lot of truth to it: “Life is 10 percent what happens to us and 90 percent how we respond to it.” Many marriages fail when there are special needs children involved, usually because one can’t handle the stress involved. Thankfully, by God’s grace and His enabling power to keep commitments, mine isn’t one of them. Yes, we struggle at times, and endure a lot of stress that comes with twins that have special needs. However, we love them very much, though not nearly as much as our Father loves us. Our children are gifts from Him, and we have welcomed them as such. Though we are far from perfect parents, we do our best. Just this past Monday night as we were getting them in bed, Tyler made a statement about doing good things and getting to heaven, which provided another opportunity to explain the gospel to him. We pray that he will understand soon what it means to belong to Christ and understand his grace.
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