Barb's Story

Hello, I'd like to introduce you to our family. My name is Barb and my husband's name is Larry and our 29 weeker twins are Hailey and Nicholas.

Due to infertility, I was taking 'Clomid', a drug used to induce ovulation and I became pregnant after one course of the drug. At 7 weeks I began having pain in my lower abdomen and was worried because I had an ovarian cyst prior to becoming pregnant as well as a miscarriage at 7 weeks several years earlier. My doctor sent me straight out to the hospital for ultrasound of the ovary for fear of rupture or growth of the cyst or possibly a second miscarriage. The ovary was fine and it was at that time that we were surprised, very very surprised to find not one baby, but two! Other than being 'larger', and having vomiting 24 hours a day (not so fun) it was a pretty usual pregnancy. At 16 weeks I still had not gained any weight due to all the vomiting but at the ultrasound the twins were right on target for all thier measurements. That was very relieving as I ate constantly in an effort to stay well nourished and feared that the babies were suffering from all my sickness.

Our due date was May 10, 1995 but 5 months into the pregnancy I started to become very fatigued and having a lot of low pelvic pain making walking very difficult. I am a nurse and spend 12 1/2 hour shifts standing up and did a lot of walking so work was starting to get to me. On Feb 1, 1995 my OBgyn gave the order for no more work and shortly after that there was an incident where I told my family physician that I thought 'a long stringy mucous came out'. She said it was likely nothing but since that time the pelvic pain had become so bad that walking a few feet was painful and when the babies kicked it felt as though they were using my cervix as a trampoline and one of these days would just bust through. As this was a first (successful) pregnancy for me, I didn't really have any warning flags raised and besides that, people kept telling me "of course you feel pressure pains, there's 2 of them in there". Well, I didn't even last 2 weeks and on February 13 went to the hospital for a regular ultrasound and the technician could not find the 'A' baby's head. "It was there the last time", I joked but she wasn't smiling. She had several technicians come and look and then sent me directly to my OBgyn at the same hospital. I was admitted immediately with a fully effaced cervix but no dilation. I was on bedrest, presumably for the next 3 months and was told to settle in for a long haul.

I watched the OJ trial 24 hours a day on TV, worked on trying to gain some weight as I had lost some in the past month and had only gained 17 pounds at the end of the 5th month. I went through the daily battery of non-stress tests, blood work until I was one big bruised mess, ultrasounds, fetal movent charts, weights, fetal monitoring, BP's 8 times a day and urine tesing for glucose and ketones 4 times a day. I had also been having what was thought to be stress incontinence, got a nasty case of cholestasis that burned my skin all up and in the meantime went from having pregnancy induced hypertension to getting complications known as HELLP. Hemolisys, Elevated Liver enzymes, Low Platelets.

I was a full 6 months pregnant when the big "gush" came at 4 am. on February 25, 1995. When the doctor examined me he said my cervix still wasn't dialated at all, but he could see a small trickle of amniotic fluid and we would wait until 8 am. to see what will happen and do some tests then. The doctor left and within 15 minutes I had the nurse call him back as contractions had started and were hard and regular 1 minute long and 3 minutes apart right from the very beginning. I was transferred to a labour room and left there from 5am to 7am when my husband finally arrived. We sat there another hour until the doctor came in and said they would be taking me to another hospital by ambulance as they did not deliver babies that early there. The ambulance ride over to the other hospital was a joke, strapped to the stretcher flat on my back with two babies inside cutting off my circulation, labour pains and all and the ambulance nearly gets in a collision with a car that ran the red light at an intersecion.

We made it in one piece to the other hospital and I spent 9 hours in labour, fully expecting to deliver naturally, when the doc decided "We are doing an emergency C-section now." During the transfer to the second hospital, the records got mixed up and they thought that the first baby was bigger. I kept telling them that the first baby was smaller and the second larger baby was breech. They didn't believe me so I asked that they comfirm this with the first hospital which they did and that's when the C-section was done. It was performed under a general anesthetic, so neither my husband or I got to see the babies born. Larry was escorted by a nurse and pediatrician to the NICU and was told that 29 weekers should be over 2 pounds but since there was 2 babies and since I had so many complications prior to the delivery that the twins would likely be less than 2 pounds each. Larry was shown all kinds of one pounders and was very upset to see such tiny helpless little creatures. Our pediatrician and OBgyn at the new hospital were pleasantly surprised to have delivered a 2 pound 10 ounce baby girl named "Hailey Justine Allyse" and a 3 pound 1/2 ounce baby boy named "Nicholas Stephen Anthony". They were wisked away to the NICU and I am told that they had pretty good apgar scores, both the same at 8 and 9. It was interesting to note that the second score is done after intubation so it must be the aid of the ventilator that gives them the higher score.

Well, Larry saw the babies soon after the nurses were finished putting in all the lines and tubes and such and the nurses gave him polaroid pictures of the kids to show me what they looked like. Apparently Larry did show me, but I don't remember hardly anything for the next few days. I woke up the next day and saw the pictures on the bedside table and picked them up. What a feeling it is to wake up a day later, no babies inside and all you have to show for it is a painful old incision big enough to drive a Volkswagon through and a couple of polaroids on the beside table. I was numb, mostly because I was on a morphine pump and pretty much out of it and 24 hours after the birth was taken to see our babies. It's an experience that I would not like to repeat. To this day the only way I know I was there was because we have video and photos of me looking at them. I vaguely remember thinking that they 'don't look plastic'. Go figure that one.....I wasn't thinking very well but I think I had the impression that they would look like little dolls and they wouldn't look like real babies. Come to find out later that my girlfriend who had 25 weeker twins a month earlier had the same strange feeling the first time she saw her girls. Anyway, the twins spent 2 months in hospital. Hailey only spent 2 days on the vent before pulling it out and Nick spent a few weeks. Nicholas extubated himself but only lasted a few days and had to be reintubated and got pulmonary edema but other than that, the millions of apneas and bradies and the ups and downs of weights, they had a pretty easy course of things. Both babies had ROP (Retinopathy of Prematurity) Hailey had stage 2 and Nick stage 3. Nick's resolved spontaneously by 12 months but Hailey's had only resolved in one eye by that time. Her other eye resolved spontaneously (without intervention) by 16 months of age and hearing tests were normal. We attended parents of preemies classes at the hospital while the babies were inpatients and have had them to the Follow-up Developmental Clinic 4 or 5 times in their first year to check on their progress.

The kids will be 2 years old at the end of February and have done very well. They are both walking and running, they feed themselves, drink from bottles, sippy cups and open cups and have just started to master speech. We just had a visit to the Follow-up Clinic this month and as we suspected there are still a few problems. Hailey is severely speech delayed and will be attending a Children's Hospital speech therapy program and Nicholas continues to have problems with overall low body tone and high tone in his hamstring and heel muscles making sitting up and walking more of a challenge. Despite these minor obstacles, the kids are doing just great! They also decided that being 'PREMATURE' was the way to be and have 'prematurely started the terrible twos'. To sum it up, they are 2 very happy, very healthy toddlers, TANTRUMS and all!!!