For parents who long for growing their family by having children, the inability to conceive and have children is devastating. But miracles are interesting in that they can happen when you least expect them to happen. After more than five years of trying to get pregnant, and after attempting to get help with a variety of costly fertility treatments,
Joby and Annie Johnson were almost ready to give up on their dream of having children. It seemed like no matter what they did, and no matter how many treatments, procedures, and surgeries they had, a family just wasn’t in the cards for them. Even worse, doctors couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t happening. Annie shared that “on paper, everything looked great,” but she finally realized she wasn’t going to get pregnant without help.
But destiny had something else in mind altogether. After the first in-vitro cycle failed, Annie’s sister, Chrissy, stepped up to help and made the offer that she would surrogate a baby for her sister. That can’t be an easy decision to make. I’ve been pregnant twice and one of my babies was born when I was in my 30s. It wasn’t easy, to say the least. Pregnancy is hard on a woman’s body. But Annie felt “helpless,” and it was heartbreaking for her sister to watch her going through that. Chrissy and her husband had already been blessed with two sons and lived just seven houses down the street from Annie and Joby.
To Chrissy, it made sense for her to become a surrogate for her beloved sister, Annie. Annie says that the sisters have always been very close and she accepted Chrissy’s offer because she knew how desperately Chrissy wanted to help her. The thing is, when you truly love someone, you feel their pain as if it’s your own pain, and that’s how it was for Chrissy. Since Annie had a willing surrogate, her doctor agreed to place two of Joby and Annie’s embryos in Annie’s womb and two of the embryos in Chrissy’s womb. With a 14 percent chance that Annie and Joby might end up with a set of twins, they were prepared for that. Joby says that it was a problem they’d gladly deal with: the problem of having two blessings instead of one. They were even ready for four babies, and it’s a good thing.
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When they got the call, both Annie and Chrissy were prepared for bad news. However, what they ended up getting instead was good news. Chrissy was pregnant with twin boys and Annie was pregnant with twin girls. For Chrissy, it was a beautiful blessing. She said, “Emotionally, mentally, in my heart, I’m doing this for them.” The sisters both gave birth on the same day, by a planned cesarean section. Four beautiful babies were born. Chrissy gave birth first so that Annie could have the surreal experience of watching her little boys be born. When her little boys were in the world, Annie went off to deliver her baby girls. These babies are twins by birth, and quadruplets by circumstance, and are deeply loved by both their aunt and their mommy. Watch this heartwarming video below.
