The Year That I Forgot How Old I Was and We Ended Up With Twins

It was a few days before my birthday in May 2008 and Scott and I had the following conversation.

J: I can’t believe I am turning 35 this weekend.
S: What?!?
J: Yeah, 35 is so old.
S: Are you kidding? You are already 35.
J: No, I am 34…wait I am 35. Oh no.

I had been procrastinating and I had given myself a deadline of my birthday to make a decision – were we going to have another child?

I think that most people assumed that we were always planning to have more children after Juliana, but that wasn’t the case. I wasn’t young when Juliana was born and I hated being pregnant. Juliana was such a good baby and toddler, but children are a lot of work. I loved being Juliana’s mom and maybe our family of three was enough.

My birthday deadline had arrived and brought with it the news that I was a year older than I thought I was so the decision was even more urgent in my mind. The “advanced maternal age” line had passed a year before and time was not on my side.

So after thinking about it for a few weeks, I told Scott that I wanted to have another child. And while I was still getting used to the idea, I was quickly pregnant. Morning sickness had already hit when I went to the Dr for my 5-week confirmation appointment and one of the first things I said was, “At the top of my chart I want you to write the following: Repeat C-section and tubal ligation. Because we are only having two children.”

Three weeks later we found out that I was pregnant with twins and I spent the rest of my pregnancy getting used to the idea and then they were suddenly here. Life on my birthday in 2009 was very different than the previous year.

Life happens fast – those babies are almost done with Kindergarten and my little girl is going to be as tall as me before I know it.