August is a strange time for me. This is the month that I celebrate the life of my beautiful daughter, who just turned five. I also mourn the loss of her twin, Peyton, who died at birth. From outward appearances, my involvement in Gemini Crickets stems from my being the mom of my crazy three-and-a-half year old twin boys. But, I was a twin mom even before that when I got pregnant with my identical twin girls.
Mine is a somewhat confusing tale to outsiders. They ask if my twin boys were born premature and I shake my head as I remember the birth of the boys, one who weighed just over seven pounds; the other, just under seven pounds. The doctor and nurses exclaimed as they pulled the boys out, “Wow, those are BIG twins!” If I happen to mention that my daughter was 13 weeks premature, inevitably the next question is, “Do they know why?” The answer to this is unfortunately somewhat complicated and too tragic for public consumption so I usually respond with something vague.
The situation is that Nicole and Peyton were in a precarious physiological state when they were in my womb. Being identical twins, they shared a placenta and were at risk for a condition called “twin-to-twin-transfusion-syndrome” or TTTS. Single babies actually reside in two sacs. The outer sac is the amniotic sac; the inner is the chorionic sac. When twins share a chorionic sac, they also share a placenta and there is a danger that their blood supplies can become connected. This results in one twin literally giving the other a transfusion. As a result, one twin gets too much blood/nutrients (the recipient); the other not enough (the donor). This places a lot of strain on both babies and the mortality rate is 60-100%. Strangely, it is often the recipient who has the harder time due to the stress of all the extra fluids on the baby’s organs, but this wasn't the case with us. Nicole was the recipient and Peyton was the donor.
In my 27th week of pregnancy, I wasn’t feeling the babies kicking as much. I went to the ER and they monitored for an evening, and then sent me home. The next night, I was back again with the same symptoms. The following afternoon, I went to a perinatologist who diagnosed TTTS. Via ultrasound, they could see the disproportion in the size of each babies sacs. The reason I couldn't feel the babies' movement was because Nicole was swimming around in tons of amniotic fluid and Peyton's was nearly depleted so she was "stuck." They scheduled me for an amniocentesis, in which they would drain the excess fluid from Nicole's amniotic sac. If caught early enough, this procedure seems to balance out the inequalities and often women with TTTS go back repeatedly for this procedure throughout the remainder of the pregnancy.
They ended up draining a gallon of excess fluid from Nicole’s sac and it weighed eight pounds. Not moments later, both babies were in severe distress and they rushed me in to the OR for an emergency c-section. The chaos of two perinatologists, two neonatologists and probably six nurses was intense. So focused on saving the babies were the staff that they didn’t notice that I had thrown up and was almost choking.
Several minutes later, one of the neonatologists came in to say that Peyton didn’t make it. She had taken a few breaths, but weighed only 1-1/2 pounds and was just too fragile. Minutes later, they came in to say that Nicole was alive, but fighting for her life. They brought me a baby to hold in my arms and it took me a few moments to realize that this was my precious Peyton, an angel who only had a few moments on this earth. As you can imagine, the whole experience was surreal and overwhelming.
Nicole struggled significantly with a host of medical problems due to her prematurity and the TTTS. Every major organ was either underdeveloped and/or traumatized. She had a GRADE 3 brain bleed that was particularly worrisome. Now if you don’t believe in miracles, hear this. After eleven arduous weeks in the NICU, Nicole emerged completely healthy. The brain bleed had completely disappeared and she came home at a whopping six pounds! Once home, Nicole thrived. She was monitored closely by Early Start and hit her developmental marks every time. My little miracle just started kindergarten and if you adjust the age, that means she’s more than three months younger than the very youngest child in her grade. I feel I can brag a little because I’m just so darned proud of her!
Now’s the time where I wipe away my tears and hope that I’ve left my reader with some hope and not too much sadness. We all live with some degree of loss and it makes what we have all that much more precious.
Original post to Mad About Multiples. Lisa can be found at the Curious Georges.
