I was raising two children, a boy and a girl. I had a job I adored, drove a decent car and had my own two bedroom apartment — it wasn't easy, but with my job and support from a friend at work, I was doing it. Then, I met a man with whom I fell so deeply in love. This guy was so full of life. I had never seen one person be liked by so many people. And he loved me. How lucky was I?

Five months into our relationship, I was offered crack cocaine by one of his friends and I accepted. My boyfriend had been smoking long before I met him but, somehow, he kept it from me. After a couple of months of smoking crack, I started missing work, wasn't being the mother my children had known and the man I fell so deeply in love with wasn't the same guy — and I wasn't the same woman.

Needless to say, my boyfriend moved out, my mother took my children and I lost my job, my car and then my home. Everything I loved was gone, and I had no clue how I was ever going to get it back. The one thing that never left was crack cocaine and the people I came to know through this drug. I was lost without any love and was smoking even more. I was on the streets in the cold, the rain, the heat—whatever the weather threw at me, I was in it.

This was my life for three years. My family never came looking for me, nor did I look for help from them. In the beginning, I really thought they loved me and that someone out of my very large family would try to help me, even if it would have been to tell me how disappointed I had made them. I was very close to my family and I had let them all down. So without their love, I smoked all the more. It was all I knew.

Then came September 6, 2006, the day everything changed. I took a pregnancy test. It was positive, but everything in my life was negative. I had nothing — nothing to offer a baby. I was sick with worry. September 16th was my birthday—I hadn't heard my mother's voice in a very long time, so I called her and asked her to tell me happy birthday. She did. While talking with her, I got the nerve up to tell her I was pregnant. She asked me what I was going to do. I told her there was only one thing to do — abortion. I was on crack and homeless. She agreed.

The next couple of days I was desperately trying to figure out how I was going to find the money and a place that would do the abortion. Somehow, I went to the Pregnancy Decision Health Centers in the north end of Columbus, thinking this was where I would fix it all. I still don't know how I came to think this was the place that was going to help me get rid of this problem. I can only think that God led me there to change my mind on aborting my baby. When I told the nurse, Joann, why I was there and she said to me, "God is bigger than anything you are going through."

Then she took me into a room where she did my ultrasound. She found not one, but two babies. Oh my gosh, TWO babies! I told her my mother was a twin. She knew then I couldn't abort these babies, but I was even more confused and really stressed out. She then talked to me about a place I could go for help to get off crack cocaine and for starting prenatal care. She gave me a Bible that I still have today. She asked me to say a prayer with her and I told her I couldn't. I didn't want to be a hypocrite. I didn't know what I was going to do once I walked out of those doors, so she said the prayer alone, aloud.

I called her the next day and asked her if she could do another ultrasound and possibly say that prayer with me. I was as ready as I could be. Maybe it would help me to see the babies again and saying that prayer surely wasn't going to hurt. I think feeling love from this stranger I had met just a day earlier gave me hope. She had such hope for me and my babies. She asked me if she could have a picture of the ultrasound to put on her refrigerator and I happily said yes. She had so much faith. And her faith gave me faith.

In December, I finally decided to call my mother and tell her where I was and that I was pregnant, with not one baby, but two. After three years of praying to God and missing my family desperately, not knowing how I would ever get back, my mother asked me if I wanted to come home and have my babies. Finally, I was going home. I'll never forget that night. I was home where I should have been all those years. It wasn't going to be easy. I was scared my children might not understand, but my parents and my children welcomed me home and accepted me and my new babies.

On March 26, 2007, I started the process of labor and delivery and my mother never left my side. My daughter Paige Kathleen was born first: 5lbs. 2 oz. – 18 inches long, blonde hair and beautiful blue eyes…PERFECT. Then, 2 minutes later, my son Peyton Wyatt, was born: 4lbs. 14oz. – 18 ½ inches long, brown hair and beautiful blue eyes…ALSO PERRRFECT!

Our family was the luckiest family on this day! All because of a place called The Pregnancy Decision Health Centers where Joann works. Through an ultrasound, she showed me my babies. The gift of their lives returned me to mine. I have re-established my home where my children live with me, and I am in an ongoing relationship with my parents and extended family.

Tabatha visited Pregnancy Decision Health Centers.

Faces of Option Ultrasound Index

All Pregnancy Medical Clinics in the Option Ultrasound Program provide limited obstetrical ultrasound as medically indicated.  Clinics are licensed to operate under the supervision of a physician, using only trained sonographers. Focus on the Family does not endorse the use of ultrasound outside of a medical clinic setting and does not endorse the use of ultrasound for non-medical reasons.  Patient referrals are made to physicians for follow-up diagnosis and care as needed.