A Tulsa, Oklahoma, couple have gone from zero children to five in less than a year after they adopted triplets then fell pregnant with twins.
After struggling to conceive, Sarah and Andy Justice went to see a specialist who told them IVF would cost them up to $60,000 and they’d still have just a 10 per cent chance of getting pregnant.
So, they told Tulsa World, they decided to adopt, and after an arduous time they were matched with a soon-to-be mother. However, when Sarah took the birth mother for an ultrasound, the doctor had a surprise – not one but three babies were on the way.
‘Wow! This is great,’ thought the couple, who knew they wanted more children but didn’t want to go through the exhausting adoption process again. ‘It’s everything we wanted.’
The babies – Joel, Hannah and Elizabeth – were born premature but healthy nine months ago, and were still in neonatal intensive care when Sarah and Andy had their second surprise. Sarah was pregnant. Two months later, at a sonogram to find out the sex of the new baby, Sarah called Andy.
‘One is a boy,’ she said.
‘One!?’ he exclaimed.
He had in fact been joking that they would probably have twins, but never for a minute thought it would actually happen.
‘That’ll teach me to keep my mouth shut,’ he told Tulsa World, laughing.
‘No, really, we were very happy. Did we panic a little? Of course. But we were very happy.’
Abigail and Andrew were born healthy and are almost eight weeks.
Sarah said even if they knew they’d have their own biological children, they’d never give up their triplets.
And Andy believes the twins may not have even come along had the adoption not panned out so well and taken away the stress they’d been under.
‘Maybe it’s all connected,’ he said.
While not getting much sleep and saying ‘we don’t sit down much either,’ the family get a lot of help from their tight-knit community.
Friends and family have set up a weekly rotation to help Sarah while Andy is at work and their congregation at Eastland Baptist Church have kept them fed with homecooked meals.
And they say the babies go through 40 to 50 diapers a day – or 300 a week – but they’ve all been donated so far.
‘We’ve been very, very blessed,’ Andy said.
