My twin daughters turn 6 today, so I thought I would regale my Daily Kos brethren with the story of their birth.
Warning: It’s long... and emotional... and, well, just read it for yourself... below the fold.
My wife and I were married for about 2-3 years before we decided to start having kids and immediately fell into the million-strong corps of those unable to have children the "traditional" way.
In April 2001, with a year and a half spent with a local doctor and no success, we decided to seek an expert opinion and, based on a friend’s recommendation and success, my wife contacted the University of Chicago Hospital and was referred to a specialist in Reproductive Endocrinology and Infertility. During my wife’s first appointment the ultrasound showed numerous cysts on her ovaries and speculated that she had Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome, or PCOS, a condition that goes grossly undetected in many women.
Flash forward to November 16th... we have the first ultra sound at the University of Chicago, which showed one yolk sac. Because we had so much trouble getting pregnant, they scheduled us to come back a week later for another ultrasound to see if a heartbeat could be detected.
On November 23, 2001, the day after Thanksgiving, we returned to the University of Chicago for the follow-up ultrasound. This time, the doctor, nurse and my wife and I saw and heard something that was somewhat surprising: the sight of two yolk sacs, and the thumping of two heartbeats.
We couldn’t believe it.
My wife and I always knew that twins were a possibility with us. They run in her family (her maternal Grandmother having the first set some 30 years prior) and the fact that we were using fertility drugs. The doctors told us that our twins were the result of genetics and not the drugs.
After the appointment, we got back in our car and, not able to contain our joy, called our parents to inform them that they were getting not one grandchild, but rather, two of them, giving my in-laws numbers 5 & 6 and numbers 1 & 2 for my parents.
After that ultrasound, my wife was released back to her local Dr in Kankakee. On December 12th, 9 weeks pregnant, my wife experienced some bleeding. The two of us went to her local Dr’s office the next day and had an ultra sound done at our local hospital. During the ultra sound they were unable to see any space between the twins and thought the twins were conjoined. We were, needless to say, shocked and frightened, making that night the HARDEST night either of us could, at the time, remember.
The Dr’s office called and scheduled a Stage Two ultrasound at the University of Chicago for the next day. We went back to the University of Chicago the next day for the Stage Two ultra sound.
The good news was they weren’t conjoined... but the bad news was they were classified as Monoamniotic/ Monochorionic, or mono-mono twins.
Here comes the science... A Monoamniotic pregnancy is when each embryo or fetus from one single zygote – commonly known as identical twins – is located within the same amnion, which is itself in one chorion (Monochorionic). Sharing the same amnion –or the same amnion and placenta – can cause complications in pregnancy. For example, the umbilical cords of monoamniotic twins can become entangled, reducing or even interrupting the blood supply to the developing fetus or becoming wrapped around the others’ neck. A mono/mono pregnancy occurs when a zygote (egg) splits after the 5th week.
My wife’s specialist at UCH was informed of this discovery, contacted my wife and referred her to a high-risk ob-gyn at the University of Chicago. The good doctor also told her what to expect over the next few months, saying that she would need constant follow-up, no traveling past the first trimester, and hospitalization weeks before delivery.
My wife’s high-risk ob-doctor was brilliant throughout the pregnancy and at 23 weeks became her primary doctor. After that appointment the doctor called two days later and ordered her on strict bed-rest at home.
Starting with the 24th week of pregnancy, my wife began to see the doctor once a week for an ultra sound – the only activity she could do on home bed-rest. She had failed her one-hour glucola test and had to have the three-hour test, which she passed the first time.
During the 25th week appointment my wife had an ultra sound to check the twins’ movement and fluid. All was fine.
On April 8 (3 days after our 5th wedding anniversary), she returned for another doctors appointment and ultra sound. During this "routine" appointment, they performed a Non-Stress Test (NST) and an ultrasound. Before her doctor even walked into the room, he told my wife and her father that he was admitting her to the hospital for the remainder of the pregnancy.
Now you might be asking where I was – well, we had decided that I would forgo this appointment so I could save my time-off for when the babies came home...
D’oh!!
My wife and I knew that this was going to happen, but not so soon. She was admitted and they immediately started her on a regime of steroid shots and told her that they might have to deliver the girls soon... at 25 weeks.
Her first night in the hospital they were able to stabilize her and the babies. Throughout the time she was hospitalized, she was hooked up to a heart monitor that tracked each baby’s heartbeats.
They moved her to the Perionatal Special Care Unit for constant fetal monitoring the next day. It was during the second night that one of the girls decided to de-cell (the heart rate suddenly dropped) and they rushed them back to Labor and Delivery where she then spent the next three weeks with very limited movement, not being allowed to get up to shower, use the restroom or go off the monitors. Ever.
If one of the girls was not traceable, the medical students, residents and/or nurses were in the room STAT with an ultra sound machine.
On average, my wife was having 4 to 5 ultra sounds a day. Every Monday my wife had a "routine" stage 2 ultrasound. Each one showed that the girls were growing and doing well.
When we were in our 29th week of pregnancy, my wife was moved back to the peritoneal ward and was given permission to be off the monitors for 1 hour each day, but still with continual ultra sounds. At 31 weeks, a stage two ultrasound showed each twin was close to, or over, 4 pounds.
They repeated the glucola test and she tested positive for gestational diabetes, immediately she was given insulin only when her sugar levels were high. After three days of this, they decided to give her insulin twice a day.
On Sunday, May 19, we hit 32 weeks. That Monday, May 20th, my wife and I were told that we had entered a very crucial and very critical week and her privilege of being off the monitors was revoked and she was back to being monitored 24 hours a day with limited movement.
On Wednesday, May 22nd, my wife had another stage two ultra sound in the morning - the girls and their cords looked great! She ate lunch, and was feeling fine.
Around 3:30 pm, one of the girls went off the monitor, the nurse assigned to my wife came in, and without any success in finding the heartbeat, paged the resident who came in with the ultra sound machine. The resident also could not locate the babies’ heartbeat at first - once she did, one of them was failing very, very quickly. They rushed my wife down to Labor and Delivery under the guise of doing another stage 2 ultrasound. My wife tried calling me at work, then tried calling her mom at home... neither of us answered.
She delivered both girls at 4:19 pm on Wednesday, May 22nd.
I was not around, nor was any of our family. I had gotten up from my desk at work to grab some coffee before I started my nightly trek to Chicago from Aurora, IL to see her. When I got back to my desk my voicemail light was lit, yet there was no message. Sensing something was wrong; I called home to check our voicemail. At 4:33 PM, I heard the message from one of the residents saying that my wife had been taken down to Labor and Delivery for a crash c-section.
My daughters had arrived...
Immediately I ran over to talk to my boss and he, seeing the look on my face, told me to get the hell out of there...
First call: my mother-in-law. I call her, and tell her the babies were here and who, at first, did not believe me, thinking that I was pulling a prank (for those of you wondering; yes, I could see myself doing that) But, after hearing my voice and checking her caller id and seeing a University of Chicago phone number, she stated that she and my father-in-law would leave as soon as he got home from work in about 10 minutes.
I then called my parents and they jumped in their car and began the 4-hour trip to Chicago from St. Louis to see their first (two) grandchildren.
Worried that neither I, nor any other family member, were going to be there when my wife woke up, I called my brother, a professor at DePaul University, at his office in downtown Chicago. Without a moment’s hesitation, he hopped into a cab and rushed over to the hospital to be with his sister-in-law when she woke up... something that she and I will never, ever forget.
Because this was, in medical terms, a ‘Crash C-Section’, my wife was put to sleep and an IV inserted. Her doctor was at a meeting elsewhere on campus and, from what we were told, bolted out of the meeting when he was told the Mono/Mono twins were coming. He got there in time and delivered them both, skillfully and with a very modest incision, at 4:19 PM on May 22, 2002.
My wife and I were told later that ‘Baby A’ came out crying and that ‘Baby B’ came out floppy and unresponsive – meaning she had to be given oxygen immediately after birth.
Baby ‘B’ also had approximately 9 – 10 knots in her cord and a twin-to-twin transfusion had occurred... she was the baby that began to de-cell upstairs.
I arrived at the hospital about 2 hours after I heard the initial call at home – traffic, of course, being worse than usual. I parked the car and ran faster than I have ever run before into the hospital. Upon entering the Lying-In center, I saw my brother walking out of the Labor and Delivery department while reaching for his cell phone.
My wife had woken up and was very happy to see a family member staring back at her, even though they did mistake him for the father and showed him a picture of the (very large) placenta...something that I know he will never forget as it gave him a perfect opportunity to trot out a line from one of his favorite movies; "Fletch" when the nurse asked: "Ever seen a placenta that large?" "Not since breakfast."
Because my wife had had an emergency c-section, she was, essentially, knocked out and woozy for the rest of the day/night. This meant that she would not be able to see our children until the next day. The next three and a half weeks my daughters were living in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at the University of Chicago Hospital while my wife and I lived next door in the Ronald McDonald house.
The rest, as the saying goes, is history.
What my wife, and to a lesser extent me, went through for our beautiful and lovely daughters is something that I will never forget.
Happy Birthday girls... Daddy loves you very, very much.