Well we barely made it into the 2nd Trimester before we received more distressing news. At 14 weeks the High Risk Dr. told me that I had Vasa Previa. This means that one of the umbilical cords on it's way from the baby to the placenta lost a portion of its protective coating and was positioned over my cervix. They looked further and saw that it was Baby A's fetal blood vessel.
Geez - can't we get a break! The Vasa Previa causes a problem because if I go into labor or my water breaks the blood vessel can rupture and the baby could bleed to death in a matter of minutes. We were told that sometimes as your pregnancy progresses the blood vessel can move to the side and not right over the cervix. My Dr. said to me that this would not happen for us.
The plan for now was to put me in the hospital at 32 weeks and take the babies before I went into labor (at 34-35 weeks).
Well I guess the Dr's don't always know everything because the Blood Vessel did move!! I can't remember exactly when we found out but probably 1 - 2 months after diagnosis we found out that it did move more to the side. Hopefully it would keep moving in that direction! Whew!
At 20 weeks we had another terrible scare! My High Risk Dr. was on vacation, so I saw one of his colleagues. He told me that the amniotic fluid for the Baby A was very low and for Baby B was very high - the first sign of Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS) and that within a week I would be in Miami to have in utero surgery with only a 60% chance that both babies would survive. To top it all off James was in Canada for work - luckily my mother in law was at the appointment with me!
Of course we were devastated! TTTS means that the blood supplies from each baby gets connected together and the blood can flow disproportionately from one twin to the other, where one twin ends up with too much blood and the other has too little blood. If left untreated TTTS has an 80 - 90% mortality rate and for those that do survive, they can have severe handicaps.
We went in a few days later for another appointment to see the progression. James was back in town and luckily we saw a different Dr. (my Dr. was still out of town). He said the amniotic fluid was in the normal range and that we should come back in a couple of days for another look.
The next appt. everything looked good! My Dr. was back and told us that TTTS is a progression and not something that you can see with just one appointment. My guess is that I never had TTTS and that one Dr. made us crazy for nothing. One thing I can tell you for sure is that I will never see that Dr. again!
We have made it past the 2nd trimester and are counting down each week!
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