Hi, My name is Kristin and I have been married to my husband Sheldon for 1 1/2 years. We have a 2 1/2 year old son together who is the love of our life. I quit my job as a computer programmer to stay at home with him. Now I do the accounting and office work for our own small mini excavating business that we run out of our house.

We started trying for number 2 in August 2007 and got pregnant right away. It wasn't surprising as I got pregnant with my son while on the brith control pill. Unfortunately that pregnancy ended in a missed m/c that we didn't find out about until 13.5 weeks. We have no idea when the baby died but were told it was weeks earlier. We were totally devastated but wanted to try again right away after following the doctor's instructions to wait 1 cycle. I got pregnant right away after my first a/f after the m/c too. Now we just wait impatiently to find out this one is OK! I have a doctor's appt on Tuesday, I will be 12 W 6 D then and we are hoping to hear our little ones heartbeat. So far this pregnancy is exactly the same as when I was pg with my son and it is totally different than the last one so our fingers are crossed.

Best wishes to all you other mommies out there that are on this journey too!

Wow our journey sure changed alot! After having done a triple screen at what I thought was 16 weeks, it came back abnormal with a 1/64 chance for our baby having downs syndrome. This was a shocker as I am only 30 and those were the stats for someone who was 42. We phoned around to try and get an earlier ultrasound as the medical genetics place would not do a detailed scan until we at least had a dating scan. We got in and on Friday, March 28th we found out that I was actually 2 weeks less pregnant than I thought (16W + 2) and that we were pregnant with IDENTICAL TWIN GIRLS!! We couldn't believe it! So the medical genetics people reran the test (which now we know was taken at 14 W) with the new data and it came back abnormal again. After numerous fights with them about when the blood was taken and that the test shouldn't

be done for twins - they finally agreed and sent us for a detailed scan at 18 weeks that confirmed our babies were girls and that they were in fact identical. Everything looked great, their growth was right on tartget and there were no signs of any abnormalities.

During the fourth and fifth months I really started to notice a difference in being pregnant with twins instead of a singleton. I started to get really big and was in a lot of pain. It constantly felt like my belly was going to wrip in half. I didn't think much of it though as my docs said everything looked normal so I figured it was just the added discomfort of carrying 2. By 23 Weeks my belly was huge and that is when our nightmare began...

On Friday, May 16th we headed up to our families cabin in the Okanagan. We arrived around 3:00 pm, by 5:30 I was having contractions every 2-5 minutes. I knew something was wrong so my husband drove me to the nearest hospital. They confirmed I was in preterm labor and swabbed me for a fetal fibronectin test. It came back positive that I would deliver within the next 2 weeks. They measured me and my fundal height was 37 Weeks, that is when I went into labor with my son, at 37 weeks. They managed to stop the contractions for the night and did a quick ultrasound. They noticed I had way too much fluid and that it looked like I had a stuck twin with no fluid. They thought it was TTTS (Twin to twin transfusion syndrome).

I was air lifted to our Women's Maternity hospital the next morning when I started laboring again. Luckily it stopped shortly after we reached the hospital. There I was met by a team of perinatologists that I to this day cannot thank enough. I was sent for a 4 1/2 hour ultrasound that confirmed we were at stage 2 TTTS. Baby A had 0 fluid and was "stuck" and Baby B had over 17 cm of fluid. Baby A no longer had a visible bladder as it had collapsed because she had no fluid.

TTTS is very rare and our hospital had only done 13 surgeries before, however the docs had done more than that at other hospitals. There are only 4 doctors in Canada that do the surgery. 2 are here in BC and one happened to be away at a TTTS conference in Europe. We were given all of the grim odds for survival of 1 baby and for 2. They aren't very good but if left untreated there is an 85%-90% chance both babies would die. TTTS only affects 10% of identical twins sharing a placenta. It is extremely rare.

I underwent laser surgery on Wednesday, May 21. At the end, the doctors removed over 4 Litres if amniotic fluid from Baby B's sac. It totalled 9 lbs. At the end of the surgery I woke up to a room full of people clapping as they still had 2 heartbeats. I don't think I have ever seen so many doctors in one room, as it is so rare they all wanted to see the procedure.

I was sent to recovery and within hours I was sure I could feel both babies move. (I swore weeks before that I could only feel one all of a sudden). 12 hours after the surgery we had an ultrasound and Baby A already had her bladder back and a tiny pocket of fluid. The doctors assured us that we were only doing the u/s to check the blood flows/heartbeats of the babies as there was no way a baby would show improvement until at least 48 hours after the surgery. They were shocked to see improvement already! At 36 hours past surgery Baby A had 3.5 cm of fluid which is NORMAL! If I walked into the hospital with this ultrasound they would no longer diagnose TTTS! It was a miracle.

We are now 2 weeks past surgery and my contractions have completely returned to normal Braxton Hicks. I am on modified bed rest but I am allowed to move around some. I do measure 35. 5 weeks again but the babies are healthy and their fluid levels are totally normal. Baby A (Abbey) now has 5.1 cm of fluid and Baby B (Charley) now has 7.8 cm of fluid. We had a growth scan today and both babies way 2 lbs 2 oz.! They are growing perfectly!

Our main goal now is to get me to 28 weeks (only 2 more weeks to go) and then hopefully make it past 33 weeks. We were told that the average women with the surgery makes it to about 33 Weeks. At this point we are just so thankful that the girls are still in there and that they are growing stong. It seems hard to believe that 2 weeks ago we thougth we were going to lose our babies. Thankfully they are still in there cooking and we will get to meet them soon...but not too soon!

28 Week Update

So things have gotten worse again. I had an u/s on Wednesday, the day I turned 28 weeks, and it seems our donor baby Abbey is "stuck" again and only has 1 cm of fluid. This is so devastating as up until now since the surgery she has done so well. The good news is we have made it to the second huge milestone of 28 weeks. Her growth has slowed down slightly and the doctors figure it is a matter of time before she stops growing and needs to come out. Both girls are about 2 1/2 lbs but Abbey is slightly smaller. The doctors think that in doing the surgery they cured them of the TTTS but in doing so they have cut off some of the vessels that were needed by Abbey. There is no way around this as the surgery was a must and it has bought us the last critical 5 weeks as they wouldn't have made it this far without it.

I am now going for 3 NSTs a week and will have another u/s on Wednesday to check blood flows etc witch so far have been normal which is really good. They have told me to come bags packed because if things haven't improved I will be admitted so they can monitor the babies closely and take it day by day whether they should come out or not. So now we are just hoping for a couple of more weeks. I will be 29 weeks on Wednesday and we would like to make it a week or 2 further to 30-32 weeks.

30 Week Update

So after last weeks u/s which was no better or worse than the week before I thought these little girls would be coming out sooner rather than later. Much to our surprise today ABBEY's FLUID WAS NORMAL AGAIN!! How much more of a roller coaster can we endure - LOL! The u/s was great. Abbey's growth has slowed a bit and she is 1/2 lb lighter than her sister but she is still within the normal range. Abbey is in the 43rd percentile at 3 lb and Charley is in the 70th percentile at 3 lb 8 oz. So I have decided to continue my NSTs 3 X a week and will still go for my u/s next week (Docs said I didn't have to until 2 weeks) because I will feel better knowing everything is OK. They will do another growth scan in 2 weeks which I will be 32 weeks by then which was our ultimate goal. So they are still cookin'!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

31 Week Update

HERE WE GO AGAIN!!!! Our u/s showed Abbey's fluid back down to 1 cm. But all her blood flows/dopplers were still normal which was good. We have another u/s next week to check everything as well as growth and still 3 NSTs a week. After my u/s I was sent for an NST and S**T hit the fan! Abbey's h/r went up to 200 for about 5 minutes and I started to panic as it started at 170 (which it is never that high) and just kept going up. I asked the nurse if she was in distress and she said yes, it looks like it!! The nurse grabbed the doc and next thing I know I am being wheeled into L & D. They kept saying, "I am sorry I know you didn't come here to have theses babies today." I'm like "WTF?". I was so scared because I was all by myself, hubby was at home with our son - 2 hrs away. When we got to L & D they hooked me back up to the fetal monitor and would you believe they monitored the babies for 4 hours and Abbey's h/r was perfect!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! They actually sent me home again! I was shocked and I really don't know how much more of this I can take. I really hope that after 32 weeks they just get them out of there. At this point there is so much more that can happen in rather than out, I feel like we are a ticking time bomb. I AM SO DONE!

32 Weekd Update

Woohoo 32 weeks! The BIG MILESTONE and we made it!! This week our u/s was great. Abbey's fluid was still low but the doctors still aren't concerned as long as her blood flows look normal and she passes all of her NST's which have all been really good. They did a growth scan today and Abbey has almost caught up to Charley! OMG this little girls is full of surprises! Abbey weighed 4 lbs 3 oz and Charley weighed 4 lbs 6.5 oz which they said was right on target. So here we go for another week.

33 Week Update

Well we almost didn't get here! On Friday I started feeling really crappy, almost flu like and I said to my husband that something wasn't right. The pressure down below was getting really bad and I could just feel that things were changing. By Saturday morning I was getting BH like crazy and they were consistent throughout the day and most of Sunday was the same thing but they got farther apart by Sunday night. I said to him on Saturday I give these babies a week and I will be in labor. HAHA! Well Monday was pretty normal and the contractions were still there but a lot less often, maybe every 12-15 minutes so I didn't think much of it. As of Tuesday morning I started feeling like crap again. I was so tired and irritable. We took Brody to swimming lessons and then I headed out to my Mom's that afternoon as I stay there Tuesday nights because she is close to the hospital where I have my u/s and doctor's appts on Wednesday morning. We were just about to sit down to dinner when I went to the washroom and wiped and there was blood. Not bright red but fairly pink. I had been losing my plug for a while but it never looked like it had any fresh blood so I called the hospital and of course they said to come in and get checked. My mom drove me in and it took forever, there were all of a sudden 15 patients int he assessment area with only 5 beds. By the time they checked me it was almost 9:00. I was 3 cm dialated. My contractions had been there but not painful up to that point. Then within 1/2 an hour of them checking me they started to come every 3-4 minutes and were becoming a little more painful. My husband headed in from our house 2 hours away. By 12:00 he got there and about an hour later the contractions were so painful they started giving me the gas to make it through them. They checked me again and I was only 4 cm dialated so not a lot of progress. About an hour later they came in and gave me an epidural. It all went downhill from there. I continued having contractions which later died down and I never dialated past 4 cm. Basically because I was 33 weeks at that point they said they would not stop labor but they would not help it along either. My contractions went down to every 5-6 minutes with no pain. They had let the epidural wear off and removed it the next day. I am now in the hospital until I have these babies. I am still losing heaps of my plug and just today at 33 W 3 Days I am starting to have some very slight bleeding again. But who knows, I suppose this could go on for weeks. I will be induced in 3 weeks if I don't go back into labor on my own. The weirdest thing is I still have contractions every 5 or 6 minutes!

35 Week Update

Wow! I can't believe I am almost there! 2 more days and I meet my girls. I am having a hard time believing this roller coaster is almost over. I have spent 2 weeks in hospital since going into labor at 32 W 6 D and was just let out last Monday but only to my parents house as they live about 30 min from the hospital and we live 2 hours from there. I have been sent down to labor and delivery 2 or 3 times during my hospital stay as my contractions would start up again but then go nowhere. I have lost more mucus and bloody show than I ever thought possible (LOL!) as I lose it for 2 days about every 5 days. I then get checked and of course, I am no further dialated than I was 3 weeks ago. I had a n ultrasound on Friday, August 1 st and have been so worried since then as Abbey only grew 5 onces in 16 days and her sister grew over a lb. They are now 4 1/2 lbs and 5 1/2 lbs but their blood flows were all perfect so the doctors were not too worried about the growth issue. I have been out for a week now and back a couple of times for doctors appts and everytime the doctor says they will induce me on August 14th but they doubt I will make it that far. Funny how I am sitting here writing this on August 12th, still contracting, some painful some not and will likely need to be induced with more than 1 round on Thursday. My body is just not normal - LOL! Any other woman's babies would have fallen out by now considering what all has happened. I was in hospital all day Sunday as we went there because I woke up soaking wet and thought my water had broken. They saw no sign of that by ultrasound or when checking me so I must have just 'peed myself' in the night LOL! However, it is a great thing, a miracle we believe, that I will have carried these babies to 36 weeks when the first time I went into labor I was 23. 5 W pregnant and a lot has happened since. I am wondering how we have made it through all this but really it hasn't been that bad. I mean, it could be worse, and I still have 2 healthy babies growing inside of me that were supposed to be born before they were even viable. We are so, so lucky.

8 weeks

15 W 2 D