Twins: Unexpected When You're Expecting

Once upon a time, not very long ago, we knew my wife was pregnant, but we didn't know we would be having twins. Assuming we would start parenthood with one child, we began to prepare, trying to get a head start on a few things during early pregnancy. Mostly, we began to sort through the junk in the guest room and in the office, both of which had devolved into junk rooms. I was hit by the urge to purge pretty hard. Having been a bit of a nomad throughout my childhood, I don't have as much stuff as most people, so thankfully I didn't have as much to get rid of. My wife however came from a stable family that has lived in the same house for nearly 20 years - and recently most of her stuff from there had arrived at our house.

Anyways! We purged a lot. We're still working on that. I moved furniture around so the guest bedroom could serve as an office also. It was a nice set up. Both Alison and I liked it better than we had before. The former office, though the smaller of the two small rooms, would serve our baby nicely enough.

Then we found that we weren't having a baby. We were having two babies. A couple days after the shock began to wear off, I realized that there was no way we were going to be able to fit a second crib into the already planned to be rather sparsely furnished bedroom we had chosen for the baby. There was just no way. The other bedroom though, we could fir two cribs into. Just barely, when you add a changing table, a dresser, and a chair for rocking and nursing.

"These kids are already causing twice as much work!" I exclaimed.

And I went back upstairs and starting swapping furniture from one room to the other. A work still in progress since we are going to have to sacrifice a few more pieces of furniture than we had planned to do previously.

We anticipated having a baby, but not twins, of course. So many people these days seem to think that every child must be planned, but even when you plan to conceive, twins, at least when conceived the old-fashioned way, are surprises. They are unplanned. Twins are God's way of reminding us that He is in charge and our plans are not always His plans, but that His plans are better.