Premature Twins
Last evening at church, we were asked to pray for a premature infant. It only weighed one pound five ounces and was twelve inches long. The prayer request reminded me of something that happed to me as a U. S. Naval corpsman and stationed in Keflavik, Iceland. This was before I was discharged from the Navy and earned my bachelor’s degree in nursing. The naval station at Keflavik had a small hospital that was composed of two wards, an operating room, and an emergency room. The one ward was divided into private rooms and held obstetric patients and pediatrics and an occasional officer. The other area was an open ward for the enlisted men.
A pregnant woman was admitted again. She had several previous admissions for her pre-eclampsia. Pre-eclampsia is a condition where pregnant women have changes in their body that would cause their blood pressure to dangerously rise. It required bed rest to lower the woman’s blood pressure. Each time she came in, we would tease, “You’re going to have twins.” because her abdomen was so large.
She would respond, “No. No. My doctor assures
me that there is only one.” At that time, we didn’t have sonograms or other
tests. It was only by listening with a fetoscope to hear the infant’s heartbeat
that we could monitor a child’s progress during the pregnancy.
I was working the daylight shift after
she delivered the evening before. She had indeed delivered a set of twins. She
had two daughters. I was planning to tease her about having twins, but when I
went into her room, I was stopped in my tracks. She was crying.
I asked. “What’s wrong? Are you having
pain?”
She gave a few more sobs before managing
to answer, “If I had a little girl, I planned to name her Alice. Now I don’t
know what to do. If I name one of them Alice, I know I will love that one
more.”
Off the top of my head, I suggested,
“Well….Why don’t you name them both something close, but not Alice? How about
naming them something like Alicia and Allison?”
She stopped crying, saying those names
softly to herself. Those were the names she used with her new little girls. Neither
name was Alice, but both were close to her cherished name.
About a month later she contacted me and
I had the privilege of babysitting the girls while she and her husband had
their first date night away from the twins. She said it was only fair, after
all …I had named them.
