Sextuplets

Well, they say that things tend to happen in threes...for two families this weekend, it happened in sixes. Six babies that is! The Masche family in Arizona and the Morrison Family in Minnesota both delivered 6 babies each within 10 hours of each other. The Morrison 6 are in critical condition (this is typical for this situation) but hanging on in Minnesota while the Masche 6 are doing well and off ventilators in Arizona. I cannot imagine having 6 babies at one time. I have been reading the websites and blogs for these mothers and for two other mothers who are expecting 6 later this year. It is amazing what they have had to go through to deliver these kiddos, but they count it as blessing even though it may be a tough road. All of their stories are inspiring on their own. They take on a new meaning when you are anxiously awaiting to find out if you are pregnant...

Me? Nervous???

We already know that we will be beating the odds to get pregnant in the first place. Well, we have even joked about how "funny" it would be after all this worrying to end up with twins or triplets. Late Sunday night, Richard just had to put it out there...he held up his hand with all five fingers up and said "quints!" My jaw dropped and I looked at him with disbelief..."where did that come from?" He told me it had just popped into his mind today, he did not know why. Monday rolls around and we here the news of not only one set of sextuplets born, but two! Needless to say it has been the topic of conversation with just about everyone who knows me.

"Nancy, I was thinking about you all day yesterday after I heard about the sextuplets!"

After reading more about their stories, the Morrison 6 blog really captured my attention. They got married in 2005, were trying to get pregnant for a year with no success, then sought help from a fertility specialist. With the help of fertility medications they used artificial insemination to try to get pregnant. Right before the insemination, they had two mature eggs and two immature that were probably not viable. In Ryan Morrison's words from the site "There was a 25% chance of us having twins, a 3 % chance of us having triplets and anything else was laughable. " I call those FAMOUS LAST WORDS!

So of course, before I find these stories I am thinking to myself, "well, there is just no way we could have 6...I only had two really mature eggs, two that could be mature and two that were immature and probably would not fertilize at all. I'm thinking 4 at the most"...funny how your perspective of a situation changes when you see the potential outcomes...

As we have always done, we are praying for the PERFECT number of children for us...Richard stated it beautifully in an email repsonse to my mom today...

"Let's hope and pray that God delivers the exact perfect number for all of us to handle (and not all of us handling one each at the same time, either!)."

If that happens to be 6 babies, then we know that God has a plan and we will be very blessed (and calling on the Morrison's and Masche's in hopes to benefit from their experience!)

Until the news of the sextuplets hit, I had planned on posting about one of our favorite pastimes here at the Schunke household...Bad movie Sunday. I will save it for another day...

Prayer focus for the week...

Patience, patience, and more patience and help through the hormonal changes that are still occuring on the back half of this cycle...the progesterone cream is having surprising effects including big mood swings along with a few other things I won't mention here...happy happy joy joy...