Complications

Lately things have gotten a little… complicated.

I guess that’s the simplest way to put it, without sounding overdramatic.

Up until this point, my pregnancy has been humming along without complications; at 22.5 weeks I’ve gained a minimal 9lbs, I’ve successfully weaned myself off of my morning sickness pills, and every day I can feel my twin girls rolling and kicking in my belly.

I’m incredibly healthy, the doctor, obstetrician, and specialists have said. I should be proud. My babies are incredibly healthy too, weighing in at 1lb 4oz; more than what one would expect from twins at this stage.

The only thing to worry about, I’ve been told, is something called TTTS, or Twin-To-Twin-Transfusion Syndrome, a condition where one fetus takes more blood from the other, causing in itself swelling and heart attack, and in the other lack of development and jaundice. And for both, sometimes death. However, as long as their growth is monitored carefully, doctors can catch this when/if it happens and do things to delay or stop it before fatality occurs.

What no one did prepare me for was being told I have an incompetent cervix. Why should I? Sure, it’s more common with multiples, but I’m 22 and in excellent physical condition especially for someone carrying twins. I've never had a miscarriage, or an abortion, or any other physical issues that might indicate this would be a problem. So why me? Upon hearing the news you find yourself pouring over everything you’ve said and done in your pregnancy up until this point. Is it my fault? Did I do something to cause my cervix to open up almost completely, with only 0.75 of a centimeter keeping my babies in the womb? Sometimes it just happens, the doctor said. The pressure of two babies on the cervix can force it to open and kickstart pre-term labour, and mine apparently has decided to do so before I’ve crossed the “24 week” survival threshold. Doctors won’t even attempt to resuscitate a baby born before 24 weeks, he continued, as their organs won’t be developed enough at that point to sustain life.

So, here I am. On bedrest until Monday when the hospital can admit me indefinitely and start me on a round of steroids intended to speed up my babies’ growth and stop my body from pushing them out before they're ready.

“So they’ll definitely be born prematurely… what do you think, around like 30 weeks?” I’d asked, naively. Or maybe hopefully.

The doctor smiled in a sad little way. “I would love to get you to 30 weeks.” He replied simply, the implication clear enough.

Forum after forum that I poured over, results that popped up from my “incompetent cervix twins” Google search, told me that all wasn’t lost. Some women had had their babies at 25 weeks without fatality, and others were taken off of bedrest at 30 and carried their twins to full term. It’s almost impossible to predict what will happen, so we have to take it one day at a time. This is what I tell myself.

But the days feel long already. And two weeks feels even longer.

At our ultrasound before the bad news, we watched our babies tumble and flap their fingers. One even yawned, stuck her tongue out, rubbed her eyes and smiled at us, something the doctor quickly snapped a picture of. They are so alive, so healthy, so content with their condition. It’s impossible for me to think of them any other way.

So I won’t.

I will picture my girls, and the day we get to hold them, and the later day when we take them home. And I will tackle this bedrest as aggressively as I tackled having a healthy pregnancy before this.

They’re fighters. They came into existence through impossible circumstances, survived a procedure before we knew they were there that should have caused a miscarriage, and have managed to put on more weight than you would expect of identical twin girls sharing a placenta. After everything they’ve overcome I refuse to believe that it will be something as small as this that takes them from us.

This is just another hurdle, and we will tackle it together.

After all, what other choice do we have?