Kari Tyree

On the way home from church on the day before my 20 week ultrasound (the one where they look at the baby’s anatomy and measure all the body parts and organs), I saw four blue jays. I was driving, and we were already in our neighborhood on slow, residential streets, and I almost stopped the van. At least I slowed down significantly and pointed straight ahead at the line of blue jays flying in a row across the road from one tall oak tree to another. “Look, Joel! Four blue jays!” They flew, one after the other, across the road in a little arc, right in front of us.

Blue jays are special to me. For many years now – I don’t remember when it all started – God has used them to encourage me. I will see one at just the right moment when I’m feeling down, and it will remind me of the simple truths that God is with me, He sees me, and He cares.

When we saw the four blue jays, we were in the middle of a conversation about the upcoming ultrasound. I had been nervous about this pregnancy because it is the third one and my second daughter is still fairly young. The spacing of the children was making me stressed. But seeing those four blue jays (quite an unusual sight) spoke to me right when I was thinking and talking to my husband about the ultrasound where we would find out so much information about the new baby. I knew that God had allowed me to see those jays to encourage me, and I knew that during the ultrasound the next day I would think of them and be encouraged, no matter what news we found out.

In the ultrasound room, nice and dim with a warm glowing lamp and the little machine all ready to check out the baby in my belly, the technician helped me lie down. My husband sat on the chair next to me and we watched as the tech squeezed the cool gel onto my tummy and started to look at the images. She stopped after about two seconds, pulling the equipment away from me, and jumped over to the computer. The ultrasound screen was black. “I’m just going to check out your file,” she said. She stood there with her back to us, scrolling through my file while we patiently waited. I adjusted my ponytail under my head. “Are you OK?” the technician asked, without turning around. “Yes, just fixing my ponytail – I was lying on it,” I answered. She scrolled some more.

Finally, she turned around and stepped back to the ultrasound machine, looking a little hesitant. “So, when you had the first ultrasound, you know, the initial one, did they tell you one baby or two?”

“Uh, one,” we said.

“Well, it’s two.”

“What?!” “Are you serious?” We exclaimed our surprise and shock. “Is it normal to miss that?”

“It can happen,” the technician said. Then she proceeded to show us the two babies in my womb. She calmly measured the baby she labeled “TWIN A” and then the baby she labeled “TWIN B” while my husband and I absorbed the crazy news and took in all of the information that we could. We did pretty well, I think, considering we had every reason to believe up to this halfway point through the pregnancy that I was carrying one baby.

When the ultrasound technician finished measuring both babies, she went to get the sonogram pictures, leaving us alone in the room. I reminded Joel of the four blue jays. “Now I understand,” I said. “Four blue jays for our four kids.”

There was another surprise we received that day: the midwife unwittingly told us (even though we had wanted it to be secret) that our twins are girls. We had wanted to find out the gender at a later time, in private, but I am glad that the mistake happened and we got to find out during our visit. Knowing one more piece of the mysterious puzzle that I’m sure will be the twins helped me absorb the news a little more easily.

We’ll have to make a lot of changes (I can’t see the midwives anymore, but will switch to an OB, and I’ll have to see a specialist as well, plus the expected delivery date for the babies is now about three weeks earlier, plus – you know – more stuff, because, well, two babies at once!) but I feel peace. I felt peace in the midst of the crazy news because I knew God was with us. He had specially prepared my heart, with a gift tailor-made to suit me, so that I knew He was and is and will be giving us special grace to handle this new situation and whatever it brings.