Twins—shhhhh!

It’s been an exciting time here in Northern Island. Emily is pregnant, and as of last Friday we know that it’s twins. It’s still very early, only around 8 weeks, but is already reshaping our lives. I think my reading audience here is small, so it seems safe, but we probably won’t tell people on facebook, etc. for a while.

About a month ago Emily found out she was pregnant. It was a bit earlier than we had planned, but not terrible timing. Emily’s breastfeeding-friendly birthcontrol wasn’t available in Taiwan, and we misread the iphone app that charts fertility. Another baby at this point was not necessarily dissertation friendly, but there were several pros: birth in November or December when it’s not roasting hot, the flexibility of language school for the first nine months, time to settle into life here before we return to the states in a couple of years, Sam would be able to go to nursery school with them, etc. So, all in all, not terrible timing.

We scheduled a hospital visit last week. We’d all been encouraged to go to the big Presby hospital downtime. It’s a good hospital and not very far, which is nice. However, when we went there most of our conversations were in Chinese and it is hard to get a personal sense of the people we’d be working with. We probably need one or two people with excellent English, either a nurse or doctor or a midwife or someone from school here who goes with us. The funniest moment was when the doctor told us they were going to “listen for the heart through the vagina.” Thankfully, this turned out to be an ultrasound. When the radiologist told us that it was twins I honestly thought at first that she was joking. She said something about “two eyes,” and I thought she was kidding us. “Haha, yes, we all have two eyes.” But no, it really is twins, at least for now. The doctor said identical are possible based on the shape of the sacs. On the other hand, the odds are in favor of fraternals.

We’re still figuring out where we want to stay for the birth. There are plusses to being at a big hospital, especially with the complications that can with twins. The very close nearby hospital is also appealing and we may be able to go to a clinic. The challenge we’re finding is that we need help, but people can be offended if you reject their recommendation.

That’s the big news here. We’re excited about it, scared, hopeful, worried, distracted, curious… Pray for us.