Fearfully and Wonderfully made

Warning:  This blog post contains images of alpaca fetuses at about 3 months gestation.  If you would rather not view them, I advise closing this window and not reading any further.

This is the last cute picture in this post.

Isaac came in from the barn with a report that he had found an amniotic sack in the upstairs pasture.  One of the mamas had spontaneously aborted.   We went out to see what it was that he had found.  All the mamas were safely 3 months pregnant, so a lost pregnancy was a bit of a surprise.  Mom opened up the sack and this is what we saw:

Two tiny baby alpacas.  The one on the left had been stepped on by another animal in the pasture, but the one on the right was perfectly intact.

Not quite 5 inches long, this baby (had it not been miscarried) would have weighed 15-20 pounds by next summer

His sex had already been determined.  He was most definitely a “he”.  The hindquarters of the other fetus had been crushed too much for us to determine the sex.

Since his skin was still so thin we could see all the tiny blood vessels that supplied his body.

His tiny split hooves were already completely formed

Both babies had completely formed eyes

You could already see his nose and the spot where his ears would grow

He even had and itty-bitty tiny tail

Every single rib was formed and attached in the correct spot

As we examined these two tiny babies I couldn’t help but feel and incredible sense of awe and wonder.  They were approximately 3 months gestation (we don’t know for sure yet which mama miscarried, so we can’t be certain on length of gestation at this point).  Alpaca babies normally have 11.5 month to 12.5 month long gestation periods.  These tiny twins were only about ¼ of the way there, yet they were completely formed.  Every last detail, ears, tails, noses, genitalia, ribs…it was all there.

Psalm 139: 13-16  talks about how we are fearfully and wonderfully made.   If our G-d gives such attention to the formation of an alpaca baby, how much more attention does he give to the formation of a human baby?

He knows us before we are formed (v16).  These twins were completely formed ¼ of the way through their gestation period (and probably much sooner than that, I just didn’t get to see them).  ¼ of the way through human gestation is just over 2 months.  Some mommys are just confirming their pregnancy at that point, but the baby is already completely formed.

I don’t know what became of these twins (Both my little brothers declined to take them to school for show and tell…they likely ended up on the manure pile), but I do know that they gave me a wonderful reminder of how fearfully and wonderfully made I am.