28 Weeks!!!

We are here! We are finally here...28 weeks (yesterday! so technically today we are 28+1!). That time in a threatened preterm pregnancy where the weight on your shoulders becomes a little lighter, when you can breath a little deeper, when you can start to see the light at the end a long, dark tunnel. We are at a place now, where if our boys happened to be born, they would have an excellent chance for survival and a significantly lowered risk of being born with life-long disabilities. This was our first goal, given to us by Dr. W. I have read in a few places that at this point, every single day spent growing inside my tummy may mean one less week spent in the NICU. That...is incredible. Every day that we've remained pregnant since being here at the hospital (32 days so far!) has given us a tangible reward. Healthier babies. Plumper babies, better able to survive in this outside world. We have been given until 32 weeks to keep these babies inside, at which point it will be safer for them to continue to grow outside.

Their estimated weights as of about a week ago, were 1lb8oz (A) and 1lb12oz (B). I was really, really hoping that they'd be past the 2lb mark at this point, but I suppose I may have been aiming a little high. Our smallest boy didn't show any growth from the previous week, but the doctors aren't concerned quite yet as it's hard to say whether things are happening or not happening after just one week. We may know more after both boys are measured again next week. I'm hoping his slow growth just meant that a major growth spurt was on its way...the sudden onset of some crazy insane stretch marks must mean that something in there has changed!!

Notice that we are back to calling the babies by letter names. At one point, the letter names were thrown out the window because it became so incredibly confusing. Babies were constantly changing who was presenting, and switching places, and so eventually when the differences between the three became obvious enough, we gave them names. Our recipient twin was named "Poly" (polyhydramnios - excess fluid), our donor twin was named "Oli" (oligohydramnios - reduced fluid), and the baby supposedly on his own, with the consistent incredible amounts of excess fluid from the very beginning was named "Singleton". But because there are just two babes we are keeping a close eye on now, and one of them has kept his head burrowed deep down into my pelvis trying to escape for the last few weeks, we are back to twin A and twin B. We can also tell that twin A has a slightly thicker heart muscle than B (another reason to think that he is our "Poly", and that we lost "Singleton"). That is another big reason we went back to letter names, because we still aren't quite sure whether we lost "Poly" or  "Singleton".

At one of our ultrasounds this past week, the tech agreed with me that Singleton is our angel baby. I could have jumped for joy that someone was finally on the same page as me, and was wondering why on earth it was taking so long for my point to get across to someone 'on the other side'. So when Dr. J walked into the ultrasound room talking again about the possible side effects of one twin when his co-twin passes away, the ultrasound tech spoke up and said that she thought both of the identical twins were still alive. On that day, she could actually show to cord attachments and which ones still had blood flow, and I knew that the seed was finally being planted. I was so thankful that the tech said something, because clearly I wasn't getting through to anyone no matter how many times I mentioned it.

Now, they still can't say for sure which baby we had lost. I think it's more a matter of not wanting to be wrong twice, or seem wishy-washy in their decision making. Or maybe they're realizing that they shouldn't be jumping to conclusions based on what was 'supposed' to or 'should' have happened. I really think that something else entirely has happened. At this point, to me at least, there are only two possibilities:

1) Our Singleton may have had fetal anemia, or a congenital defect of some kind that we didn't pick up on in time to intervene. His unexplained excess fluid throughout the entire pregnancy (even still now), his high MCA readings in the week or so leading up to his passing. We never had answers for those things.

2) This may actually be a monochorionic, triamniotic pregnancy (identical triplets - even more rare than our pair and a spare). If this was the case, it could explain why "Singleton" (who would actually be then an identical triplet) always had that extra fluid. And why he was showing high MCA readings post laser ablation surgery between his 'twin' brothers. It's possible that he was showing signs of TAPS (a sort of relative of TTTS) where the connecting vessels between him and the other babies were very small, but still there and unbalanced enough to cause these strange unexplained symptoms. When this was mentioned at an ultrasound later this week, I was furious that this hadn't ever been considered before. And really started to wonder if maybe it WAS possible to miss something this huge in Toronto. I'm not quite sure what to do with information like this. Could it be possible that we had inadvertently severed our third babes supply of blood and nutrients, which caused him to pass away? It's so hard to think of, I get sick at the idea of it. But at this point, it's out of our hands and what's done is done. We can't do anything to bring him back. I just can't help but think of what an incredible shame this all would be - he was otherwise perfect and healthy and part of our precious three.

We have become quite the special case here. Things have gotten so confusing and mysterious that they are taking this pregnancy to the next level. We are going for an MRI at the Children's Hospital next week. Originally the doctors were saying that this MRI would show us if there has been any damage in one of the surviving baby's brains due to the death of one of the other twins (if it was in fact one of the twins we lost). Really, this isn't for my sake. I had never requested that this be done, and what are we to do with information like that if it comes back that something had happened? Stress out about it? There is no treatment, and we will love our babies just the same. Plus, I feel like I'm becoming hyper sensitive to what's happening behind the scenes. I know for a fact that the main reason for this MRI is so that they can finally have a good look at the babies' placentation, and find out which placenta belongs to who, or if this is in fact, an identical triplet pregnancy. They are also keeping my placenta following delivery, and will be injecting it with dyes to follow the connections to see if it could provide any useful information.

If you had asked me 3 months ago where I thought we'd be at this point in our lives, in this pregnancy - this all certainly would have never, ever crossed my mind. This is so far out of the box that it nearly feels impossible that it's actually happening to us. Finding out that we were having spontaneous triplets was enough of a shock, never mind that we've been dealt every single card in the deck since then. I really feel like now, after everything we've been through, that it must be time for something to work out in our favour!

I'll share a fun piece of information with you. When I was pregnant with Lilah, I was walking around 2cm dilated with a very 'favourable' cervix for at least 2 weeks. I was about 39 weeks pregnant at the time this was discovered, I think. We got SO excited, thinking that this actually meant that something was about to happen! Well, nothing did. And all the long walks and lunging and house cleaning and painting and furniture building that I did to try to get things to move along, didn't. Even after a few cervical sweeps, nothing happened. I just stayed there at 2cm dilated with a thinning cervix. Finally I had to be induced at 41+3 weeks. I can only hope and pray that my body doesn't go into labour on it's own, just like it didn't last time. That I hang out here for another 4 weeks with no cervix and no labour. Wouldn't that just be the happiest ending to this epic story of a pregnancy?

Next goal: Make it to 32 weeks!!