Let me start off by saying that we have many great beach and first-birthday photos to share, but I haven’t gotten a chance to download and edit them all yet. In the meantime, please enjoy a few shots of Houston and me cooling off at the local aquatic center on recent a hot June day.

 

On a serious note, we had our 20-week ultrasound for the twins on Tuesday. First the good news: it’s boys! However, my OB also notified us that he found some “abnormalities” that could mean something grave or nothing at all. One abnormality he was sure wasn’t “normal” was that the amniotic sacs didn’t contain an equal and appropriate amount of fluid. Baby A, who is located on my left, contains much more fluid than does the sac of Baby B, who is on my right. Thus, A has plenty of room to move about freely, while B is limited in his space. (At this point, this situation hasn’t affected either baby’s physical development; it’s just making A happy as a clam and B bummed out that his brother keeps trying to get him to play, but he can’t.) So, the OB referred us to a maternal fetal care center, where I underwent an ultrasound this morning. The following is an email Stephen sent out to his coworkers explaining the findings of the ultrasound specialist:

“Our twins have been diagnosed with what’s called twin to twin transfusion syndrome. In a nutshell, it’s a defect in the placenta that they share that causes one twin to receive too much blood and the other twin to not receive enough. The bad news first: there’s a chance we could lose one or both twins and if they survive, they will almost definitely be premature. The good news is that on a scale of 1 to 5 with 5 being the highest severity, they are currently between 1 and 2. At 3 or 4 they could require microscopic laser surgery on the placenta at a specialist center, of which there are only a few in the country. Rebecca has been ‘sentenced’ to bed rest and she will be supplementing her diet with a heavy dose of protein. She’ll probably be getting up to two ultrasounds a week for the remainder of the pregnancy and she’ll probably get a couple of amnio-reductions, which carry a slight level of risk to the pregnancy also. For those of you who know Rebecca well, you know what kind of challenge it will be to keep her in the bed 24/7, especially considering we’ve got a one year old running around the house. All that being said, she is in high spirits and has a positive attitude about the whole thing. Thanks in advance for all your prayers and well-wishes.”

I will be getting another ultrasound, an electro-cardiogram on the twins’ hearts and an amnio-reduction this coming Monday. The hope of the amnio-reduction is that the taking some of extra fluid by amniocentesis from B’s sac will help equalize both sacs — kind of like a balloon that’s separated only by a thin membrane and is being squeezed on one end (A’s end); hence, lowering the volume of A’s fluid will theoretically force open the hand on B’s end of the balloon. This could work totally (best case scenario, of course) or slow down the progress of the transfusion (another good option, but not the best) or do nothing at all. So, please keep all of us in your thoughts and prayers, and I will keep y’all posted on our beautiful baby boys.