God gave Waylene and Harold Davis a double portion of blessings on July 6, 1972.
Benjamin and Joshua Davis were born at 7:24 a.m. and 7:29 a.m. in Saint Joseph Hospital, Milwaukee Wisconsin. The identical twin boys weighed 5.4 ounces and 5.8 ounces respectively.
Benjamin is the elder, a gorgeous baby with healthy lungs that shouted God’s glory for the entire maternity floor to hear. Joshua followed five minutes later adding his voice to the chorus of cries and joyful tears flowing that morning not only from the delivery room, but also from the waiting room where anxious family members gathered to welcome the brothers.
“Praise God!”
“Glory be to God!”
“Thank You Lord!!!”
There was a team of nurses on hand for the after care. Benjamin was swiftly taken from the doctor’s hands by Nurse Amy who cleaned, prepped and snapped on the identification bracelet to his left ankle before placing a tiny blue cap on his tiny sweet head. Then she laid him carefully in his clear plastic warming bassinet, and wheeled him to the front row in the nursery, for clear viewing when the relatives would be allowed to come see him.
Nurse Ellen tended to Joshua in the exact same manner except for placing a yellow cap on Joshua’s tiny head, that the hospital supplied just for situations like this.
From early on each of the boys had their own distinct identities. But Benjamin and Joshua looked so much alike Waylene continued to use a color coding system for her identical twin sons. There was no one who could tell the boys apart in those early days. Their clear unblemished skin gave no clue. Their tiny toes and fingers revealed nothing individually noteworthy.
Only the diaper pins Waylene used served as the who’s who for the Davis twins.
Blue is for Benjamin. Yellow for Joshua.
Despite the hectic life of caring for two infants simultaneously, everything went smoothly those first few months…until the fateful six month check-up.
Waylene brought the boys to the pediatrician’s office. She sat in the examining room on a chair next to the doctors desk. The babies were in their double stroller. A young nurse whisked the two boys away into an ante room to be weighed and came back five or so minutes later with each baby wrapped in a white swaddling blanket ready for their exams.
“Here you go Mrs. Davis.”
The nurse handed Waylene a plastic bag with the babies’ dirty cloth diapers.
“We’ve got Pampers now – no need for these anymore.”
She handed Waylene four diaper pins. Two blue and two yellow.
You know that pit you get in your stomach when something very terrible just happened? Multiply it by one million and you can guess how Waylene felt at that moment when she could not recognize which baby was Benjamin and which one was Joshua...READ MORE
