The Twins

This morning I was on an online community for 2nd & 3rd trimester loss and there was a new post from a member asking for support regarding loss of twins.  It made me think about our loss and our twins and I realized I wanted to tell their story.  So here it is:

The Twins
D and I were married August 8, 2008.  08/08/08!  We had been together for 3 years and new we wanted to have children.  We went to Jamaica in January and decided to try to get pregnant.  And, go figure, I get pregnant on the first try.  The first month.  What a shock; how crazy was that?  My first reaction was excitement, then fear, then excitement.  It was surreal.

At 12 weeks we go for an ultrasound and we find out there are twins.  But one may have Down syndrome, and the other may have a gastro problem, so they send us for testing.  Friday April 17^th they do a placenta tissue test - Chorionic villus sampling (CVS) - where they stuck a needle in my belly and take tissue samples from the placenta.  Not fun.  Much more invasive than an amnio. At this appointment they tell us that Baby 2 has Limb Body Wall complex, and that it is not conducive with life and will not survive.  No update on baby 1, so we’re to wait for the results.  Tue April 28^th we go for a follow up.  They do an ultrasound and we find out baby 1 has no heartbeat.  So they schedule us for a D&C, basically a termination.  Then Thur April 30 I wake up and there’s fluid leaking from me.  I go to work thinking it will go away, but it doesn’t.  So my friend takes me to the hospital, and 6 hours later they decide to do an emergency D&C and at 1am they do the procedure.

And so on May 1st I am officially no longer pregnant. 

This is what I wrote in my journal at the time:

"It’s so surreal.  Just last week I was pregnant, and now I’m not.  And it really hurts.  It’s really hard.  I didn’t realize how much I wanted this until now.  I guess if anything good has come out of this it’s that I know how much I want to have a baby.  But why did this happen to us?  And what if it happens again?  I’m so scared to try again, to have to wait 12 weeks to find out if everything’s okay.  And what if it isn’t?  I don’t know if I could go through this again.  It’s like I’m fine one minute and then it hits me.

And D isn’t even hurting.  For him, it’s like, well that’s life, deal with it.  I just don’t understand how this can be so easy for him.  And all I want is to be close to him, to have him hold me, and he just pushes me away.  To him it’s like nothing’s different.  Okay, so I was pregnant.  Oh well.  It’s over; deal with it.  Deal with it?  How can it be so easy for him?  I don’t understand.  It’s not fair.  I’m going through this and it’s like he doesn’t even care.  Or he does, but he’s like “I can’t help you with this”.  Maybe you should talk to someone about it.  But why can’t he just be there for me?  Why can’t he just support me and understand how hard this is?

I was ready for this, you know?  I was ready to be pregnant, and to have a baby, and to go on maternity leave.  I was ready for us to be a family.  But what if it doesn’t happen now?  What if, after all this, we can’t have children?  What if I went through all this for nothing?  What if I was finally ready to have a baby and it doesn’t happen?  I don’t think I could handle that.

They say you only get handed what you can handle.  Is that true?  Am I really strong enough to handle this?  I just want this to be over.  I want the pain to end.  I want to be happy again.  I want to feel like I can be truly happy.  I’m okay during they day, but at night, that’s when it truly hits.  That’s when it hurts.  And D just leaves me alone.  I’m crying here in the office and he’s just watching tv.  I know he’s giving me my space, but seriously.  What is he thinking?  That this is easy for me?  I feel guilty for being so upset, for being so sad."

After we lost the twins we went for genetic testing because my husband's brother has a son with PKU (a rare condition in which a baby is born without the ability to properly break down an amino acid called phenylalanine).  4 months later (!!) we got the test results back:

• We had a boy and a girl - my dream come true
• Baby 1 had Trisomy 18
• Baby 2 had Limb Body wall complex.

There was no genetic reason for their anomalies - it was simply a fluke.  Neither D nor I had any genes that contributed the this fluke.  The chance of something like this happening again was so minimal that there was no risk of us getting pregnant again.

It was a difficult time for us, for me, but I think what differs between then and now is that I didn't really understand what it meant to be a mom; what it means to lose a pregnancy.  Now, having Neil, I understand it more and it's much more difficult.  Plus I lost that pregnancy at 16 weeks.  This one was at 29 weeks.  It is much more real this time around than the first time.  I didn't get to meet the twins.  I met Riley.

However, now that I have lost Riley I find myself thinking of the twins more and realizing more what I lost.  They would have been 2 1/2 now.  What would they be like?  But then I think if we had had the twins we probably wouldn't have Neil and I wouldn't trade Neil for anything.  So I guess it all worked out for the best?  And hopefully eventually I'll think the same of Riley.  There will be some reason why this happened, I just don't know it yet.

And that's the story of the twins.