I've talked a lot about the medical things that happened with Lily and Leah, but I don't really talk about how I felt during that time. Partly because it's hard to describe, and in part because dredging all of that up is
In an effort to feel like I was taking some control of the situation (although I realize that
the One in control), I focused on the medical details, telling myself that the more I knew, the more capable I was at making decisions for Lily. I managed to keep myself from spiraling into the stormy sea of despair by stepping back, in a way, to focus on the details and what I needed to learn. This post is attempting to go where I don't let myself go very often, to cover how I felt during everything. I feel like maybe it's time to go
.
When I found out I was pregnant, it was only a matter of days before I told Mark, "I bet we're having twins." It was strange, but I felt different. I couldn't stand anything even remotely tight against my stomach; nor could I lie on my stomach. At this point, I was maybe 6 weeks pregnant, and I was already wearing maternity shorts, even though we hadn't told anyone that I was pregnant yet. Mark was shocked and thought twins had to run in our family for us to have them, but I told him I didn't think it mattered.
Yet, by the time I had my first OB appointment, I'd kind of put the whole twins idea on the back burner. As the midwife was talking with us, she happened to mention that they don't see high risk pregnancies, like twins, etc. The first thought that went through my mind was, "Well, that stinks. I was really hoping to use a midwife this time." Because we were unsure exactly how far along I was, she recommended I have an ultrasound. By her measurements I would have been 10-1/2 to 11 weeks along, and by my estimate I was closer to 8 or 8-1/2 weeks.
That night, I was in bed, planning to have the ultrasound the next day. I woke up from a dead sleep and my first thought was, "Oh my goodness! I AM having twins!" While lying on the table having the ultrasound, I will never forget hearing the tech say, "You have two yolk sacs." I laid there processing what that meant, when Mark asked, "Are there two babies?" She hesitated a moment, and said,"Yes, there are."
I. was. shocked.
Not shocked that I was having twins, but shocked that I'd known I was having twins! I'm not normally so intuitive. Of course, now I realize that God was preparing me.
Once home again, I joined the twins group on BabyCenter. I researched stuff on twins because.... well, that's what I do. I like to know what I'm getting into. At this point, I began to get very worried that one of the babies would die. Vanishing Twin Syndrome had me completely freaking out. Something inside me was telling me that one of my babies would be very sick and might die. While I'd like to just chalk all of that up to pregnancy nerves, I know, once again, God was preparing me. I remember praying and praying that the babies would be okay, yet knowing that might not be God's plan for us.
At 18 weeks, when I had my first big ultrasound, the babies were diagnosed with discordant growth. When I'd asked if there were two placentas, the tech said there were, so at least Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome wasn't going to be an issue. Yes, I'd heard of it, and one of the ladies on Baby Center had already lost one of her twins to that horrible disease. A constant, niggling that something was wrong continued to plague me, but I chose not to worry about it until I was given something specific to worry about. We took 3 big trips during that time, one to Lincoln, NE to visit our friends, one to ND for my high school reunion, and one to dh's high school for his reunion.
My next big ultrasound/appointment with the perinatologist (high risk OB) took place when I was 20 weeks pregnant. The tech confirmed that both babies were girls. She mentioned that the membrane dividing them was very thin, which was something they'd also mentioned at my very first ultrasound, when we found out there were two babies in there. She looked over Baby A first (Leah) and everything looked good. However, when she was looking at Baby B (Lily), I could tell something wasn't right. While looking at Lily's heart, she stated that she wanted the doctor to come in and have a look. She was very calm and not necessarily acting as though something were wrong. Still, I knew something big was coming.
The doctor came in. The first thing he did was announce that we had a multi-faceted situation going on while he walked over to the white board and began jotting down a time line for when the cells divide into two identical babies and when to expect 2 sacs with 2 placentas, 2 sacs and 1 placenta, all the way down to conjoined twins. Yes, our babies were both girls, the membrane dividing them was very thin, and they were sharing a placenta (contrary to what I'd been told at 18 weeks), all indicators of ID twins. Their discordant growth suggested TTTS (Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome). All this time, he never once looked at the ultrasound machine. It was like my mind was sort of shutting down. As soon as he said "TTTS" my thoughts went crazy. I remember thinking, "Boy, I hope Mark is getting all this."
Things went from bad to worse. On top of all this, it appeared Lily had a serious heart defect called Transposition of the Great Vessels, which would likely require a series of open heart surgeries after birth to correct. They took recorded a fetal echo to send on to a pediatric cardiologist for his input. This particular defect could also be an indicator of Down's Syndrome, and because the babies were identical, they might both have Down's. I needed to have an amnio that day, to determine if the girls had normal chromosomes. If they didn't, they would not be eligible for the experimental laser surgery to re-route the blood flow in the placenta, should their TTTS worsen. At that point, Leah had normal levels of amniotic fluid, but Lily was basically stuck.
And, then I heard the words no parent ever wants to hear: "My goal is to get at least one baby out alive."
All this time, I'd chosen not to have fetal testing done to check for chromosome anomalies. I'd told myself that it didn't matter, and I would love the baby no matter what. And, I would love the baby no matter what, but there is something to be said for mentally preparing yourself for whatever is ahead too. I was scared to death to have that amnio. I worried about that big, long needle. I worried about the risk of miscarriage. Yet, the doctor told me that the benefits of knowing outweighed the minimal risk of doing the amnio. Pleasantly, the amnio was not as painful as I'd imagined it might be. I thought, "Wow! A finger poke hurts worse than this does. Maybe when diabetics have to give themselves shots in the stomach, it doesn't hurt as bad as I would have thought." You see, my thoughts were all over the place.
Now, the icing on the cake, was that my cervix was already shortening, so I was to be on bedrest, no carrying Elise, no helping to move, just bedrest (although he didn't define it further than that).
In the car, I burst into tears. We knew we had to call our families, but I couldn't even speak I was crying so hard. I was 20 weeks pregnant, and I knew I could go into labor at any time. Over the next few days, with every breath, I prayed that the babies would be okay. After three days, we got a call from the clinic saying the amnio definitely showed girls with no evidence of Down's or any other chromosome abnormality, although, the final results wouldn't be available for at least another week. I cannot even describe the relief I felt hearing those words.
All this time, I was sure we were having a boy and a girl or two boys. I never wanted Elise to feel left out because she wasn't one of the twins. While I was happy we were having two more girls, I wanted to be sensitive to Elise's needs as well. (At this point, Elise was 21 months old). Hearing that we were instead having two girls that may have Down's or some other issue was pretty overwhelming. Not only would I have a 2 y/o at home but also 2 special needs babies. I didn't think I would be strong enough to handle that, so I was feeling immense relief when she told me the girls had normal chromosomes.
None of this changed the problems with Lily's heart though. It was still quite possible that she would die. Lying in bed, all I did was sleep and pray, pray and sleep. During one of my vigils, I felt peace flood over me. Something told me that although one of our babies might be very, very sick, they would both be okay in the end. Once again, God was preparing me.
You know the story. The girls stabilized. A fetal echo at 32 weeks showed Lily had a normal fetal heart. I had a 2 hospital stays for pre-term labor, and the girls were born during the second stay, at 33-1/2 weeks.
Most of my 13-1/2 weeks of bedrest was spent reading. Mark would get me stacks of books from the library. I would make a list of which authors I wanted to read and which books I hadn't read of theirs (because at that point the list I hadn't read was shorter than the list I had read). I could easily read 2 books a day. Family came to help with Elise.
At first, I'd tried to take care of her myself during the day, with Mark staying to help get her up and fed breakfast, coming home to get her lunch and put her down for a nap, so all I had to do was keep her happy with TV during the morning, up from her afternoon nap, and busy until Mark got home. After one week of that, at my next appointment, the doctor said, "What have you been doing? Your cervix is way shorter than last week!" So that was that. I was in bed for the long haul.
Probably one of the hardest things about being on bedrest was not being able to do the things I wanted to do because I knew I'd pay for it with contractions later. The dust on top of the piano drove me crazy, yet I tried not to say anything. One time Mark asked me why I just couldn't let some things go, and I remember telling him, "You have no idea how many times throughout the day that I let things go." Keeping those babies growing inside me was the most important job I had, and I think reading so much helped me take my mind off some of the stress.
And, that basically leads up to the birth of the girls, which you already know about. I'm going to stop for now, and I'll continue later on with life after their birth.
