In the beginning…

Hello fellow fathers, fathers of twins, mothers, mothers of twins, grandmothers, whoever decided to open my blog.... hello to you. I wanted to open this blog with an introduction of myself.  My name is Devin, I am currently 28 years old.  I would define myself as a born again christian, husband, father of... TWINS, teacher of... 2ND GRADERS, and a Reds fan.  The last one isn’t so important, unless you know me, then you know that it IS important.  I also love to go to movies, shoot my shotgun at clay pigeons, and be active.  All before I had twins of course.  Those are the basics of the basics about me.  If you continue to be a reader of my blog, I promise you will learn much more.  Probably more than you want to know about me.  Especially if you are family, you have been warned.  

As I sit down and begin this blog, my twins are 10 weeks old to the day.  Sounds like a relatively short period of time, but with all sarcasm aside, it has felt like a year... at least.  I just heard my wife refer to it as ten years, and she isn’t joking. I want to start from the beginning, and it will take a good thousand blog posts to catch you up to today.  I will try to narrow it down. 

I have always had a strong desire to become a father.  I loved kids so much growing up, I wanted to be a kindergarten teacher.  I never believed I would actually go into teaching, until my junior year at Ohio State.  After working with kids at my church, I realized I wouldn’t be happy doing anything else.  My dream of being a kindergarten teacher quickly turned into a love for 2nd graders.  Imagine Goldilocks and the Three Bears.  Kindergarten and 1st grade was too small, 3rd grade was too big, and 2nd grade was just right. At the moment, I don’t see myself anywhere else.  

After my first year of teaching, I married the most amazing woman on earth, no, IN THE UNIVERSE.  Let’s call her Amy, cause that’s her name.  She is a teacher as well, but she teaches high school math. She plans on writing guest pieces in my blog, we will see if that ever happens.  I mean, she has her hands full with infant twins, as my hands are empty typing away at a computer.  All I’m saying, is she’s pretty busy. 

We were a little selfish at first and wanted to enjoy each other alone during our first year of marriage.  Birth control was the best solution to that.  After the first year or so we decided to quit the birth control.  This is a point in time where my wife and I disagree if this was considered actually trying to have kids or not.  Cough Cough, we were trying to have kids!  One of the many things that need to be in working order to have kids is ovulation.  I don’t know much about ovulation other than in needs to happen in a woman for pregnancy to happen. Thanks to the birth control, this wasn’t happening, even after birth control was stopped.  Another year passes and ovulation still isn’t happening.  This resulted in our new hatred for birth control pills, and the reason we will never take it again, nor will we recommend it to anyone.  When I say “we”, I mean my wife, I didn’t take any pills. 

Amy’s doctor recommended a solution to our problems, it was named Clomid.  More pills to change the way Amy’s body was supposed to work.  This time, it would help her ovulate.  This is the point in time Amy defines us as trying to have kids.  I just define it as the next step.  Even with the Clomid, Amy wasn’t ovulating.  The doctor increased the dosage, twice, and Amy didn’t ovulate until they gave her the max dosage.  But the good news was, she was finally ovulating.  With this, pregnancy was possible!

Before I knew it, Amy and I were about to fall asleep when she blurted out with a big smile that she was pregnant!!! I was so excited.  I was running through all the possible ways to share the news with the family.  I imagined having a daughter, I imagined having a son.  My mind wouldn’t stop running.  The excitement lasted about 3 days.  Amy walked in the bedroom and shared she was showing signs of a miscarriage, and that the pregnancy tests where coming out negative.  To be more blunt, she was bleeding. (You might need to know that anything that has to do with blood makes me light-headed, and this annoys Amy.)  She got tested at the doctor, and after a week they told us she was never pregnant.  It was weird going through the feelings of thinking we were pregnant, to thinking we miscarried, to thinking we were never pregnant at all.  Turns out, a different doctor told us that we actually probably did have a miscarriage.   How are we supposed to feel about that?  Maybe we had a miscarriage?  Maybe we have a baby in heaven and maybe we don’t?  I am still not sure how to feel.

After that, I decided to write on our prayer card at church every week.  My wife and I have been trying to have a baby for over a year now.  Please pray with us that God will bless our family.  Three months of hogging the prayer cards, Amy tells me she is pregnant again.  This time, it was with a whole lot less excitement.  I didn’t really want to accept it yet, I didn’t want to get hurt again. I wanted to hear it from a doctor first.  When the doctor did confirm it, it was still hard to get excited.  But with time, I let my heart open up to the idea.  I got excited again, I wanted to tell everyone.  But we wanted to keep it a secret until 12 weeks.  If you didn’t know (I didn’t), 12 weeks is the point where the chance for a miscarriage greatly decreases.  

I took a sick day from work for our 8 week ultrasound.  We were going to see our baby for the first time.  We were just as excited as we were nervous.  I was terrified to hear terrible news.  I desperately wanted everything to be ok.  We entered a dark room.  I sat in a chair while my wife sat on what looked like a torture chamber.  Amy had to take her pants off and they covered her with what looked like nothing more than a large paper towel.  The ultra-sound cost several hundred dollars, you think they could have used a towel. I kept my eyes on the screen as the doctor did whatever awkward methods it took to see the baby.  I saw blurry images on the screen.  I looked at the doctors surprised expression as she said, “oh!...”