He’s a 42-year-old first time dad busy assembling two cribs a few days before Father’s Day, and now all he’s waiting for are the twins to put in them. They should be here any day now.
It was a year ago last May that Robel Neway asked co-worker Christina Yousefi to marry him. They both wanted children — one boy, one girl, and that’s it. It didn’t matter who came first. Just one boy and one girl.
They never figured they’d both show up at the same time.
Christina had three positive home pregnancy tests and went to see her doctor to confirm it. Yes, she was pregnant, said Dr. Neetu Sodhi, an ob-gyn at Providence Cedars-Sinai Tarzana Medical Center, but she had some additional news.
Christina was having the two for one special. Twins. She couldn’t believe it. Twins? That wasn’t the plan.
Dr. Sodhi herself was the mother of twin boys. She told her it would be a lot of work — double everything — but there was a special dynamic between twins that was a beautiful thing to see.
She didn’t mention a study she had read that said breastfeeding a baby for the first year of life was a 1,800 hour job.
“A regular full-time job with three weeks vacation was something like 1,980 hours a year,” Dr Sodhi said. “So, if breastfeeding one kid a year is a full-time job, two is kind of like, yeah …”
Still shaken by the news they were having twins, Christina called Robel at work and went on FaceTime with him at the doctor’s office. How’d it go, he asked. Christina held up two fingers. What does that mean, Robel asked? It means we’re having twins, she said.
“My jaw dropped and I went into panic mode, everything became a blur,” Robel said. “How was this possible?”
Well, we know how, but the why is interesting, too. The numbers vary, but the Center for Disease Control & Prevention report the birth rate of twins in the U.S. is 31 per 1,000 births. It’s happening more frequently.
At this point, all Christina and Robel knew was they were having fraternal twins. They didn’t want to know whether they were two boys or two girls until their families could come together for a big gender reveal party.
Christina’s best friend went to Dr. Sodhi’s office to pick up an envelope with the reveal inside it. She kept it to herself for a month, until the big day arrived.
Robel is an excellent soccer player, and he wanted to combine the sport he loved with the gender of the babies he would love. Inside the gutted soccer ball was either pink or blue powder. Another reveal was inside a balloon Christina would pop.
Robel went first. He kicked that soccer ball as hard and high as he had ever kicked one, and it flew apart in the air. Down came pink powder. They were having girls.
Everyone thought the balloon was just icing on the cake. It would contain pink powder, too. Christina popped it and out came blue powder. It was a boy. Everyone cheered.
“We began jumping up and down, hugging and kissing each other,” Robel said. “We were so overwhelmed with joy because now we’re actually having that boy and girl we wanted. One shot and we’re done.”
Not so fast, buddy. “Of course, you can never say never,” he quickly added.
With the panic mode long gone and the gender reveal over, next came reality.
While Christina’s going to be working two full-time jobs for a year if she chooses to breastfeed, Robel’s going to have to pull his weight around their Woodland Hills home.
He’s more than ready, he said. This is the moment he’s been waiting for — to be a father.
“There wasn’t really a dad figure in my life growing up,” he said. “My mom and aunt raised me. Now, I get to be the dad figure for my kids.
“I’m so ready to be that role model,” Robel said.
Dennis McCarthy’s column runs on Sunday. He can be reached at dmccarthynews@gmail.com.