Couple Toby Fleischman and partner Lindsay Lanciault’s family will grow by two boys at the end of summer. What makes this interesting is that the boys aren’t twins and they aren’t adopted. In fact, Flesichman and Lanciault are both pregnant at the same time.
When Fleischman and Lanciault decided to start a family, they agreed that Fleischman would first try to get pregnant since she was older. After a year of trying through home insemination, Fleischman had a miscarriage and couldn’t seem to get pregnant, so the couple decided that Lanciault would begin trying to get pregnant too.
Fleischman told HuffPost, “We decided she should still try anyway since I had previously suffered a miscarriage and we just didn’t know what the outcome would be.”
However, in early November, Fleischman discovered she was pregnant. In fear that Fleischman might have another miscarriage, the couple decided Lanciault would continue to try to get pregnant — and she did.
“We both joked though, this WOULD be the time Lindsay gets pregnant,” Fleischman said. “And that’s exactly what happened. So yes, we were prepared for the positive result, but it was still a shock. We were of course so excited and we kind of just laughed ― this was the way the universe had it in store for us all along.”
After trying for so long, the women were so surprised that they weren’t just having one child, but two!
“We had been dealing with disappointment for so many months while ‘facing the stick,’ as we called it, as I had been trying to get pregnant for more than a year at that point,” she said. “We were so patterned to a negative result.”
The couple is doing well together in their pregnancy. They both are craving Italian food and ice cream and are more tolerant of each other during their pregnancies because they both know how it feels to be pregnant.
Though the idea of raising two kids just three weeks a part feels like a challenge, the mothers aren’t too worried about it. They’re immensely happy after receiving such positive feedback from their story.
As Fleischman said, “Big picture, how can loving people who want to raise children in a loving home be anything other than something beautiful? We choose to focus on the positive.”