Christmas Saved Us

Victoria Grace
Dec 24, 2018
11 min read

Updated: Nov 22

Trigger warnings: depression, pregnancy loss, and child loss.

Christmas Card Photo from 2021

December 2018:

So, I'm just copying and pasting a Facebook post here - and while I am no longer laying in bed snuggling them like I was when I wrote it and I am currently baking a cake I am just as thankful this afternoon while I'm rushing around my house like a mad woman as I was this morning while I was relaxing with them.

First, I want to say something I didn't add on Facebook: I don't know why God saved us/spared us. There are more deserving parents than me who have lost kids. More amazing moms than me who have buried their children. Kids who deserved life as much as mine or more and aren't here anymore. Just this morning one of my couples posted a picture of a small, 11 ounce baby born yesterday who will celebrate her first Christmas in the arms of Jesus instead of in her mother's arms and that broke me. That could easily have been a photo of the twins. Our story could have included a chapter like that... and I feel guilty that I have both of my girls with me this Christmas just the same as I feel blessed to have them.

I can't speculate as to why God leaves some children here with us and brings others home to Him. I do know one of my friends was going to commit suicide and then saw that the twins were born early. I hadn't seen her in years but she was my three-legged race partner in elementary school and we've been in touch enough that she [these are her words, not mine] waited to kill herself until after she saw what happened to them. But then... she felt guilty taking her own life after watching the twins fight to live. She's still here today. & even if that isn't the reason God let them live - sometimes I wonder if it is or I think that would be a good reason when I try to understand why my girls left the NICU in my arms and others left the NICU to be with Him. I've watched other parents lose kids to cancer or tragedy and show other people what it means to be fully committed to Jesus even in that despair and bring people to Christ in that way. I've watched people lose their kids and lose their faith, also.

"Why" God lets children die is a question I don't think even biblical scholars can answer in a way that makes us feel better about it. It's the first thing people who are anti-Christian use as an argument for why they don't believe in God. & it's a hard argument to argue with even though it doesn't change the fact that there is a loving God no matter what horrible things happen here. I have no answer.

I have had three miscarriages. One on my birthday while the twins were in surgery. I've also almost lost the twins and been prepared to lose Brooklynn twice in her life. I once prayed in the NICU that if He was going to take her... to take her right then because I couldn't bare to see her suffer anymore. He didn't, though. I am so thankful. I'm also very, very aware that many many parents do not get to leave the hospital or the NICU with their babies. & I do not think I deserved to more than them. Or that my girls deserved life more than their kids. & I realize that Christmas means something very different to the parents of children walking with Jesus than it does to me, because I spend my Christmas mornings with the twins. & for those parents - I want you to know I love you and I feel for you and I pray for you. I think of you every time I think of how close I came to losing my kids. I think of your kids whose names that I know and whose faces I've seen and they are remembered.

I do know that God saved my girls through divine intervention and I do not believe in coincidences. I don't know why - but I do know He did. This is how:

The original post (copy and pasted in December of 2018 and edited in 2025):

So, five years ago I was alone in the hospital in Murphy (again) & crying in my bed because I just wanted to spend Christmas at home. At this point in my pregnancy, I was in the hospital overnight multiple nights a week. The doctor had just told me it would be a few more days at least before I could leave. I was throwing up blood and couldn’t stop passing out.

My friends and family were two hours away and the weather man was calling for a dangerous winter storm the next week (remember the one that happened when Frozen came out in theaters? Yeah. That storm).

After months of debilitating illness (so severe doctors kept asking me to consider "reducing" the pregnancy to one baby) I was so depressed I wouldn’t get out of the hospital bed to walk or sit in a chair and the nurses made me wear some sort of compression machine to avoid blood clots. I was refusing to eat, shower, or move at all really.

Throwing up blood was normal for me at this point. & I was not willing to engage in conversation. I was on suicide watch at the hospital. I wouldn’t return the phone calls of my best friends.

If I’m being honest, I was trying to will myself to sleep and hoping that I was finally sick enough to just not wake up. It’s really hard to describe how sad and alone I was or how sick I was. I was as small six months pregnant with the twins as I was in high school. I haven't been that tiny since. I remember editing weddings in a hospital bed and crying. It was the only thing I MADE myself do because I didn’t want anyone to be mad at me for not getting photographs back on time.

I remember a bride’s mom asking me if her daughter’s fall wedding would be done before Christmas and crying because I was so sick, so sad, and so scared... but didn’t want to disappoint her. So, I made sure that every time I got picked up by an ambulance that the paramedics grabbed my laptop.

I wanted to quit photography and felt like a failure at everything. I had been so sick for so long and I didn’t know how I could do any of my 2014 weddings. Hannah La Falce (an angel I didn’t thank enough back then) had shot a few of them for me in 2013 and mailed me the cards to edit them while I was hospitalized. I was overwhelmed and giving up on life, truly. Many of my 2013 weddings happened while I carried a bag to get sick in. I would leave them, park my car, and sleep in parking lots. Once a gas station attendant and his wife tried to convince me to come home with them to sleep they were so worried for me.

My normal OBGYN was spending Christmas Eve with his family so the new doctor in his practice was on call. She tried to ask me about the twins and got one word answers (if you know me then you know that’s unlike me). She tried to make me get out of the bed to eat and I just stared at her.

So, then she says something like, “You know what. It’s almost Christmas. I know you aren’t due for an ultrasound again until February but let’s go see the twins. It’ll make you feel better.” & then she wheeled me in my bed down a long hall to an ultrasound room hoping that seeing them would cheer me up enough to eat or move or do something besides cry.

I didn’t look at them at first.

I just kept crying.

I was so tired of being sick.

So tired of being alone in the hospital.

I just listened to the tech talk and tried to fall back to sleep.

But I heard, “Well... let me go get the doctor I think my measurements are off,” from an ultrasound tech trying to be cheerful sounding. I looked over at her and asked if she suspected twin-to-twin transfusion (because my entire pregnancy I had worried about it). Saying it out loud made her cheerful demeanor falter and she looked sympathetic instead. “I have to get the doctor I’m not allowed to say...” Her voice trailed off. The tears came back.

My heart sank.

I texted my dad, mom, and my ex-husband while I waited for the doctor. The doctor came in and looked them over. Wheeled me back to my room... and then told me Baby B was sitting in much less fluid than she should be, and she was almost 1/2 the size of Baby A so they’d need to transfer me immediately in the am to Chattanooga where a specialist could do his best to save them. She told me I should prepare to be sent to Ohio from there, if needed, for a surgery to help save them.

They were moving me another two hours away from my friends and family on Christmas. I already felt so alone. My mom and sisters packed their things and headed my way from Texas. It was going to be a long drive.

Most of that week is a blur. I can’t recall many moments, or all of the days, or remember things in order... but I remember sitting in a long, cold hallway waiting for another ultrasound sometime after I got there.

They actually forgot they moved me there, and I sat alone in a wheelchair for over an hour before a custodian saw me crying silently to myself. The nurse had dropped me off, and the ultrasound tech was on a break. I couldn't walk without passing out. & I tried yelling for help. Nobody could hear me the hallway was so long. There were apologies. Someone gave me a warm blanket because I was shaking. Then the ultrasound happened.

Then suddenly my family was there. Suddenly in my memory, at least. It was a long drive from Texas to Tennessee and I was alone for a couple of days. & then I remember being in a chair and asking doctors if they would "put them back" after they saved them because I was "barely pregnant." I kept trying to reach for my slippers and telling them they couldn't take them because, "I'm like... barely pregnant." Shock does weird things. That was a few minutes before they wheeled me back for emergency surgery. Mom was with me. My sisters were waiting. My dad was on the way.

They were born a week after I got to that hospital. I'm not sure where the rest of the days went, but the specialist (who was the whole reason we transferred to Erlanger) needed to do one final ultrasound before we loaded up in an ambulance to head to Ohio. But, he realized Brooklynn was unresponsive and that he couldn’t send me to Cincinnati for the life-saving surgery in time to actually save her. She was out of time. We were out of time. So, he took them January 2nd at 1.6 & 2.4 lbs. My mom played with my hair while they resuscitated Chloe. Nobody told me about that for months.

It's lucky they didn't put me in an ambulance and send me to Ohio - because that day many, many drivers were stranded on icy interstate roads along our route. We would have been as well.

Three months of NICU time later and I finally saw that OBGYN again. She told me that she took one look at me on Christmas Eve and felt God nudge her to do the ultrasound: she thought it would help cheer me up.

She said she realized when she saw the twins how dire their situation was. That she believes God wanted her to know that she needed to act quick to save them. So, He nudged her by making her feel bad that I was alone on a holiday. She said she never does ultrasounds “just because.” That had we waited until February like we were supposed to do, I would have lost them both.

Every doctor we saw there agreed with her. She said she considers them a Christmas miracle.

I consider her one.

If I had not had such severe hyperemisis my entire pregnancy, then I wouldn’t have been there when she was. I wouldn’t have been so sad. She wouldn’t have felt like I needed to see them for Christmas. & they would both be dead. Because twin-to-twin transfusion had nothing to do with how sick I was. It was always going to happen, whether I had an easy pregnancy or not. But it may have gone unnoticed had I had an easy pregnancy.

Nobody realized I had preeclampsia until I got to Chattanooga and the twins were already delivered. My actual OBGYN told me he thinks if they hadn’t been delivered when they were that he would have lost all three of us.

But we’re all here, cuddled up and ready for Christmas - because a Christian doctor took pity on me and felt like the best way to celebrate the birth of her savior, Jesus, that night was to show a mom her tiny miracles to cheer her up. & because of that - the twins were saved. & I can’t imagine my life without them.

So many things had to fall into place that evening for her to be at that hospital and for her to see me in the state I was in and then for her to react to it the way she did. So many bad things happened to get me to that level of depression. But.

God works in mysterious ways.

& He has an intricate and intentional plan, always.

If one thing during that pregnancy had gone more easily I might not have been so sad and she wouldn’t have felt compelled to let me see them. If I hadn’t been all alone on Christmas Eve. If she hadn’t seen how many times I had been admitted. If she hadn’t been a Christian ready for Christmas. If she wasn’t a new mom herself in a new town where she was feeling alone.

I think of her, Dr. Pushpa, every Christmas Eve. & through their birthday.

Right now I am laying between them while they snore and I am planning our day. A day we will spend with family and friends and baking cakes and preparing for Jesus’ birthday and my heart is so thankful for her & for Christ.

If it wasn’t for His birthday - I wouldn’t be celebrating theirs on January 2nd.

So Happy Birthday, Jesus.

& Thank you, God, for using Christ’s birthday to save them.

& for using them to save me.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

**I did find a few photos from the NICU on my external hard drive as I was posting this. & one of each of them from their first Christmas photo shoot with Amber Hatley, which honestly feels like it happened a lifetime ago.**

[the first time I held them together at almost two months old]

The most recent Christmas pictures I have of them (for our 2025 Christmas cards).

We took these today during a mini-session for one of my couples who had their wedding at Grandy Mountain Tree Farm. It reminded me of why I love Christmas so much. Which brought me here, to this blog post, to edit it and re-share.