August 25, 2007 9:21 PM
Wisdom from a mother of twins
How has God used twins to reshape your life? I don't mean the obvious changes in the amount of work - and I can only imagine the work involved! My closest birth kids were 54 weeks apart, not 54 seconds - but I mean how was your life transformed into something other than what you planned it to be?
I started wondering about this when a reader I'd been corresponding with mentioned a week ago in an email to me:
You know, if I had had one child I would have that child in daycare, be beating my head against the wall at work and missing my children. No question. Even thought they are mighty expensive, I'm glad I had 2 at once!
I was so intrigued by this remark that I wondered if others had had similar Waterloos. I asked Shannon if she would write more about this - and bloggers can chime in with links to their own story and nonbloggers can take as much space as they want in the comments:
My name is Shannon and I am 38. My husband's name is Carey and he is 30. This is my first (and last) pregnancy. We reside in Austin. The twins (Porter and Abigail) are now 16 months.I knew there was a chance of my husband and I having twins. My grandmother was a twin herself. I kept teasing my husband that we were in line for twins. My husband kept saying "Shhhh, dont say that!". Well lo and behold, here we are. I worked as a social worker for a number of years. Yeah, I didn't make the greastest of money, but it helped pay the bills and I basically got to get whatever I wanted: new clothing, shoes, lunch every now and then, going to see live music with my husband all the time. Fast forward to September 2005. OB/GYN office.
Me on the table. Husband in the chair by the wall looking at the screen. Ultrasound tech rubbing the wand over my belly.
Tech: "Well let's see here. ok. ok . ok."
Her voice was calm.
Me: "Honey, I guess you can leave now because the exciting part is over. Now all they're gonna do is take my blood and do some other tests."
Tech: "Well wait a minute. I have some other newwws for youuuuu. Looks like you have another baby over here."
And there you have it. Twins. Needless to say we were thrilled. I get out of the appointment and call family. Of course they are overjoyed. I start thinking of the future. "Oh, I am going to go back to work when the kids are born. I need to drive by the church that's close to our house to get them signed up."
I called the church. They were going to have an opening in June which would be 2 weeks before I went back to work. ($1395/mo) "Great", I thought. This was the perfect set up. I called the church about 3 weeks before they babies were to have their first day. They notify me that they are closing the childcare portion of the church because it just didn't make enough money. "Ok", I thought. Now what? I go down the street about 1/2 mile and turn in my application and give them a check for $50 to reserve the spot for the babies. ($1460/mo) The place was nice, but busy. Alarms on the doors. The kids looked happy. I just knew this was the place. I kept calling. "Do you have an openeing yet?" No sorry, it might be late October. Ok that wasn't gonna cut it for me. I was stressed. I was calling and pleading to have an opening. This is the point when I started to pray for a solution. (I should have prayed earlier I thought, but the LOrd wasn't wanting this for me and the babies!!)
I talked with the manager and she told me that if I went to another location where they had openings that I would have a better chance at getting in. She told me of another location about 7 miles away, but it took forever to get there due to morning traffic. I told my husband, "Lets make a dry run." He meets me at lunchtime. I get to the facility. I'm already half angry because it took so long to get there. In my mind I was franctic....."It's gonna be ME, doing this everyday. Packing clothing, diapers, formula, toys, and these 2 brand new babies to this place." I was in tears. I saw a woman with stringy hair picking up this baby like it was just routine. The blaring lights. The crying baby in the crib. He wanted his mother, or at least someone to come get him out of his crib. I felt for the little guy. All I could think about was the chaos. The staff were very nice. The manager asked us when she thought we would need care. I told her in a rush and headed out. In the parking lot I looked at my husband like "No way in hell am I going to do this." He took off back to work. I went home.
That evening my husbands parents come over. My mother in law, God bless her, was so concerned. She basically offers to assist us financially until the babies are somewhat grown. We take the offer and I have never looked back. So it turned out that no matter what I did, there wasn't going to be an opening. I was trying to create one. What I needed to do was look at the "opening" in my own home.
God knew that this wasn't going to be the best solution for this family. I told Barbara in an email that if I had had a singleton, that baby would have gone straight to daycare and I would have gone back to work. I praise God I had two babies at once. I fall short of being a good Christian. I need to stop and really thank the Lord everyday for the gift he placed before me.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Many are the plans in a man's heart, but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails. Proverbs 19:21
Shannon blogs at Porter andAbigail and has a website: Twin Cupcakes
Posted in Inspiration, Mothering | Permalink
Comments
I too am the mother of twins...they are number 3 and number 4...before we had the twins, we moved to our current home and I got to start staying home...we could have done it in Alabama...it was possible, we just didn't know that was what we wanted for our children. I love this post...it represents my feelings very clearly...tell girlfriend she needs to start a BLOG! :) Love in Christ (thankfully), tamara
Posted by: Tamara Cosby | August 25, 2007 10:55 PM
Tamara,
Here's the blog.
www.porterandabigail.blogspot.com
I've been working on it for over a year now.
Shannon :)
Posted by: Shannon Best | August 26, 2007 10:34 AM
Ooops. Sorry, Shannon - I thought you had a blog, but couldn't find it last night.
I added it - everyone go visit Shannon at PorterandAbigail
Posted by: barbara | August 26, 2007 4:01 PM
