10w1d Visit to the Neonatal Specialist

I went to work which meant sleeping during the day and woke up to five missed phone calls from Kaiser. I guess word got through quickly to my OB that I am having triplets because she called and said that I would be hearing from a neonatal specialist, who just happens to also be her brother. Sure enough, I had three missed phone calls from the specialist and when I returned their call, they wanted to schedule an appointment with me that day.


So Scott played hookey from his boot camp exercise class and we drove to the specialist office. We had to wait quite a bit but we finally were ushered in. I'm pretty sure that the doctor stayed late just to see us. It was cool because the doc has a tv monitor across the room so I can watch the ultrasound being played on it while he works on the actual machine. I got a great view of the whole thing. The babies weren't moving during this much which disappointed me but the doctor was also faster so he moved quickly and froze the screen a lot to get measurements. Unlike the previous day when the doctors were assured that the babies were all the same size, the specialist kept making little disapproving sounds as he did his thing. Then he says "well, we have a few issues." He gave us a very frank and real look at all the risks and complications that we're facing.


The identical twins: I was so glad that there seemed to be a thin membrane separating the two because I knew that was a good thing. But apparently, they are sharing a placenta. I looked it up later and it seems the theory is that if they split after 4 days from fertilization, they'll share a placenta. Since we put the embryos in at 5 days, they obviously split after 4 days. Yikes. He says that when babies split to become identicals, they don't split everything equally. They have to share the same food supply (the placenta). And if are not sharing the food and oxygen equally then the growth of one can be seriously stunted. He brought up that dreaded thing I read of in some blogs. TTTD. I think that's the abreviation. Where one twin can actually take blood from the other twin and one will grow faster and one will grow slower. The worse thing he said is that since they are connected, that if one gets sick or possibly dies, the other one can die as well.


Then you toss in the third fraternal twin and you're dealing with space issues. He showed us their sizes. The fraternal twin was measuring nice and healthy. The top identical twin was a little behind him and then the bottom identical twin was a few days behind both of them. Still well within the normal range but clearly behind the other two. Even I could see he didn't look like he has as much room as the other two.


I am firmly against selective reduction but as my heart sank and the fears set in, I could see why people would choose that way. We immediately told him it was a no for us and I was almost apologetic when I said "I know we're choosing the harder road." Scott loved the doctor's response "It's not a harder road, it's just a road. They're all road and I don't ever look back. I just want to know the rules of the game."


That night, I called in sick and I still stayed up night. I took two different showers and I cried both times.