Gift of health

I seem to be losing my organization and time to write daily but I do have a few other things I want to share that I feel are gifts I gained or came to appreciate after going through our TTTS journey and loss.

Today I want to share my feelings on what I consider the gift of health, specifically healthy pregnancy. 

I will admit, I was pretty naïve when I came to pregnancy complications.  I had very easy pregnancies when I look back now though at the time there were things I thought were complications or problems and talked about them often.  With Zack I had signs of mild pre-eclampsia but it was easily dealt with and forced me only to take off work a few weeks earlier then I had planned.  My delivery was not ideal and has, in part, scarred me for life in regards to vaginal induced labours however Zack being born in distress with an apgar of 3 and needing assistance to begin to breath and 5 days in the NICU seems, well, trivial now.  Pregnancy with Brycen really was great.  I had no real troubles at all until delivery and an emergency c-section with the end result being a very healthy full term baby seems like really no big deal to me now. 

The twins opened my eyes from the moment of conception but certainly not as wide as they did later on. I really didn’t grasp how high risk my pregnancy was, really had no idea what to watch for, what the issues could be.  I didn’t have an appreciation either for what a miracle mono di twins are. I mean when you think about how identical twins (let alone triplets or higher level multiples) happen, that is nothing short of a miracle!!!  To think that inside my body a single sperm met a single egg and two perfect little beings, identical in every way, were formed is absolutely awesome.

I have met so many people who have had complicated singleton pregnancies too.  I don’t think we really can appreciate how amazing pregnancy and delivery is until you come face to face with serious complications. 

Today I celebrate healthy pregnancies and most especially celebrate my friend Jessica.  Today at 12:09 am Jessica delivered her mono di twin boys at over 6lbs each!  That is a miracle but the miracle is truly that this is her second identical twin pregnancy.  She was diagnosed with TTTS about a month before me and lost her sweet Tessa, like I did, the day after surgery.  In early July I learned she was expecting a surprise pregnancy…doubly surprise because it was identical twins yet again.  Later in the summer she was diagnosed with pre-stage 1 TTTS.  Basically one of her boys had a high fluid level, around 9 cm and the other had around 3 cm.  She was petrified that she was going to lose again.  Petrified of going through TTTS surgery again.  Thankfully these boys remained stable and actually got much more equal levels of fluid within a month or so and the remainder of the pregnancy contained very few ‘glitches’.  I am so glad that Jessica was able to experience a ‘healthy twin pregnancy’ and know that she, too, can fully appreciate the gift of health in pregnancy.

Welcome to the world little boys!