Since this is the first post, I figured I'd give some background on the twins - I don't want my subsequent posts to be sad or emotional, just documenting the funny or ridiculous things they do and how chaotic life with twins is/will be.
We found out we were having twins at our first prenatal appointment with our OB. I remember staring at the ultrasound machine's screen thinking, 'I see two little circles on there, I'm no expert, buuuut...' then our doctor, who had been turned away at the time, looks at the screen and confirms what I thought - there are TWO babies in there, we are having TWINS. I just kept saying "oh my god" over and over again, Grant was speechless. It was hard enough reconciling that we were actually having a baby, now we needed to change our perspective to two babies.
The twins shared a placenta (making them identical), but had their own amniotic sacs - this is called monochorionic diamniotic (or mono di). Identical twins (monozygotic) are always going to be spontaneous because they come from one egg splitting into two (or more). Mono di twins account for 64% of all identical twins. 4% of identical twins occur in mono mono - the babies share a placenta and an amniotic sac, and that makes the pregnancy more dangerous. Depending on when implantation occurs, identical twins could also be di di - each baby has their own placenta and amniotic sac - this happens in 32% of identical twins, but since it more frequently happens with fraternal twins, these identical twins are often mistaken for fraternal.
Fraternal twins (dizygotic) can happen spontaneously too of course, but more frequently they happen because dropping two eggs at once is in your genes, or you're taking some kind of fertility drugs to ramp up egg production/dropping. Fraternal twins will never share a placenta or an amniotic sac - it's basically like having two siblings born at once, which is why they sometimes don't look a like, and obviously if you have a boy and a girl.
Because twins make up a large portion of people who have used fertility treatments to conceive, parents find the question 'did you conceive naturally?' intrusive and usually way too personal.. so maybe don't ask. (also, who the frick asks anyone about conceiving a baby! TMI friends!) I lost count of how many times people asked if twins runs in the family - which, fun fact, because it's related to a woman ovulating, would have nothing to do with twins on the dad's side.
Ok, that's enough educational nonsense...
Because we were having mono di twins, we needed to go for frequent ultrasounds - I got to see my babies heartbeats every two weeks, which I'm definitely grateful for since singletons parents don't get that many. Our 20 week anatomy scan was standard, Baby B was running a little smaller, but nothing to be worried about. At the 22 week check in, the amniotic fluid levels were very disproportionate, and our maternal fetal medicine (mfm) doctor was concerned the twins had twin to twin transfusion syndrome, where one twin steals the fluids and this causes complications for both babies. A severe case of TTTS requires surgery and there was an 80% chance both twins would survive. This happened on Thursday night and Friday was my last day at school. Monday at 6am, we were at Children's Hospital of Philly having ultrasounds, meeting with geneticists, and specialty doctors. The girls didn't qualify for TTTS because while Madeline had stolen more than 8cm of fluid, Delilah still had over 2cm, which was the cut off. They did however find brain hemorrhaging in both babies. Because it was still minimal, it was something to be watched, because the blood could just be absorbed back into the surrounding tissue and cause no further harm. We came back that Thursday for an MRI, which just confirmed the ultrasound findings.
From there, it was basically one more CHOP appointment to double check things, and then the rest were with our regular MFM, watching and waiting to see if anything changed - until then, I was on bed rest. At our 26 week check in ultrasound, the mfm noticed my cervix was quite short and I was having contractions (could have fooled me though!) - I had to go straight to labor and delivery at the hospital to be checked out further. Obviously this was extremely scary - it was way too early for the babies to be coming, I had nothing ready and was 100% not prepared. Luckily, it wasn't the 'real thing', I was given steroid shots to help the babies lungs mature just in case they DID decide they wanted to come early.. little did we know that would be in just a month.
On the morning of Monday, March 30th, I woke up around 3:30am thinking the pain I was feeling was braxton hicks contractions, and I just needed to pee and drink water, and I could go back to bed. After several cycles of this and it not working, I decided to take a shower - warm water might help right? Nope. Then after an hour of pacing and telling myself this can't be happening - it's 30 weeks, we're in the middle of a pandemic, we don't have anything ready, I'm not ready, holy shiz this isn't happening - I finally decided to time my contractions. They lasted between 40-60 seconds and happened every 2-3 minutes. I looked up when you should go to the hospital and thought, maybe I should wake Grant up. Then I called the OB and he's like yea, you need to go to the hospital. We were in triage for what felt like forever (at least 4 hours) - I think they were waiting to see if they could stall labor, but that obviously wasn't working. We were in our labor and delivery room for another couple of hours until it was time for our emergency c-section (both babies were breech). We got to the hospital at 8am, and rolled into surgery around 4:30.
At 5:17pm, Delilah was born weighing 2lbs 14 oz, and Madeline follwed at 5:19pm at 3lbs 4 oz. They were brought up to the NICU on oxygen. Madeline, who had always been the bigger baby in utero, was discharged after 8 weeks at 6lbs 2oz, and Delilah was discharged after 11 weeks at 7lbs 7oz. They were on and off cpap 3 times, they graduated from incubators to cribs, and cribs to bassinets. They started out with umbilical IVs, to feeding tubes, and finally eating by bottles. This took the longest, since 'sucking' isn't something that develops fully until babies are 36 weeks. Both girls have reflux which caused bradycardia events - the reflux would come up into their throat and sinuses, burn, and then they wouldn't know what to do (swallow or cough) so they would just stop breathing. This is what kept Delilah two weeks longer than we had hoped. They both have retinopathy of prematurity (ROP) which is caused by being born before blood vessels grow in the eye towards the retina. Madeline has since been cleared by the ophthalmologist, Delilah has progressed to stage 2 and we are watching to see if it resolves on its own (hopefully by mid August). Delilah also had a heart murmur, which resolved itself, and nothing new developed with the brain hemorrhages in either girl. Now we see our physical therapist to make sure we're developing properly, feeding evaluations with the speech therapist, we're on pepcid from the gastroenterologist for the reflux, we see the pediatrician like any other newborn, and finally we'll go to the developmental/behavioral doctors in October to watch for any other disabilities.
Despite the girls being (at the time of posting this) 3 1/2 months, their milestones are counted from their due date - this is called the corrected/adjusted age, I'll probably post both. That makes them 1 1/2 months old. We're currently working on sleeping through the night (Madeline did it once - 8/9 hours, we had 2 nights of '5 hours of sleep - eat - 5 hours of sleep', most nights are still eating every 3 hours), hopefully our constant crying/fussiness is lessened as the pepcid works, we're starting to smile and we turn to look at rattles. And now this concludes the longest post that has taken forever to type out. All the rest of the posts from here on out will be funny or crazy things that happen with the twins.
Here's a teaser - right now, they don't totally get that there's another one of them around, and they usually kick or hit each other as they flail their arms around..
3.5 months/1.5 months corrected
Sometimes after that early morning feeding that probably involved screaming from both babies, I feel like I got hit by a truck, or tackled by a linebacker, hence.. tackled by twins
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