Ian Lozada: Images and Words

As a select few people know, Kristina and I found out that we were expecting at the beginning of August. Well, we've had a bit of a wild ride since then.

About nine days ago, we went in for Kristina's first sonogram. At the time, we believed her to be about 9-10 weeks along. What they told us was that they found two sacs in her uterus, but one appeared to be empty, and the other had fetal tissue, but was showing no heartbeat. Clearly, this was not good. They ordered some blood tests, and told us that the levels of pregnancy hormone would tell us if we still had reason to believe that the pregnancy was still continuing. They also said that in many cases, people conceive two, and only one survives the initial few weeks, but until sonogram technology got to a certain point, most people knew nothing of the other child. In other words, we were iffy to have even the one child out of this pregnancy at this point. The one hope we clung to was that the original physical examination had us much further along than we anticipated, and perhaps they had the wrong conception date down, and the increased uterus size was from the fact there were two embryos. It wasn't a lot of hope, but my, how we clung to it.

We did a LOT of praying over the next 24 hours. The hormone levels kept going up, so they were cautiously optimistic, and scheduled us for another sono, this afternoon. Kristina had some familiar symptoms from when she was pregnant with Caroline, so we were hopeful to see one pregnancy continuing, but we were still praying hard for both children.

Kristina didn't want to look at the screen this time, so that was my job. I didn't say anything, but immediately, I saw some familiar shapes in both sacs. Sure enough, the sono tech changed the number of fetal pregnancies on the machine from 1 to 2. Soon afterward, the sono tech told our midwife, "I hear two heartbeats."

Sometimes, God rewards your faith and your prayers in an amazing way.

When Caroline was born, we put a Bible verse on her birth announcements, and it's pretty appropriate right now:

"The LORD has done great things for us, and we are filled with joy."--Psalm 126.3