The doctors had told the couple that getting pregnant would be nearly impossible, but now, only a few weeks apart, the couple has welcomed two children.
Roman Gokhman paced after receiving an email one day. The dashing man, who is now a proud father, can still recall what he was doing prior to the mail’s arrival: painting a wall in the Concord, California home he and his wife, Jennifer, share.
The email came from a young woman in Michigan and was sent in advance of the birth of their first child. She disclosed that she was expecting a healthy girl and thought Roman and Jennifer would make good parents.
This conclusion she drew after reading their profile on an adoption website. The mail got Roman pacing back and forth, trying to decide if they were prepared to welcome two infants mere weeks apart from each other.
It took only a couple of hours for the couple to reach a decision: they would. The two lovebirds met in a journalism class at the University of Oregon in 2002, and after dating for four years, they married with the expectation of having children they could show the world.
Neither of them was prepared for the fertility struggles that followed, but they followed that path, leading them to two babies that arrived in rapid succession.
The couple has opened up about the journey that brought their seven-year-old children: son August, conceived through in-vitro fertilization, and daughter Isabel, welcomed via adoption.
THEY INITIALLY RULED OUT MEDICAL INTERVENTION
According to what Jennifer told PEOPLE, their journey began when they learned that it would be next to impossible to have kids of their own. It made the couple seek medical intervention, which they initially decided was too costly.
The boy was diagnosed with Autism a couple of years after he was born.
Instead, they turned to adoption — something she had always wanted to do in addition to having a biological child. After they signed up with an agency in early 2013, they were told that it could take as long as 15 months to get contacted by a birthmother.
Roman was feeling quite impatient, so they also started the IVF process around the same time. There was a 30% chance that things would work out, and the couple did not have high hopes, but in October 2013, Jennifer got pregnant.
Two months later, they were contacted by a mother ready to give up her child, and they jumped at it because it was always something they desired.
THE TIMING WAS DIFFICULT
The timing of the whole affair was very challenging; Isabel came first, followed by August seven weeks later.
Because the birth mom’s C-section kept getting delayed, they missed the birth by about 20 minutes, and it took a lot of reckless driving to arrive that early, but when they wheeled Isabel into the room, Jennifer and Roman knew it had all been worth it.
THEY CALL THEM TWINS
Roman and his wife call their kids twins for a good reason. They told PEOPLE that sometimes, Isabel is the only one who calms down August’s tantrums.
