When I was 19 weeks I went for my normal appointment with the specialist to check on them, my worst fear was happening. They were diagnosed with twin to twin transfusion. In the sonogram you can see such a big difference. The one baby was so small in comparison to the other and the membrane had her pushed in the corner of my uterus. The doctor comes in and asks me if I came alone and I said yes because I came during work, I was set to go back after. He sits down and lays it on me, he said this is what is happening and you have choices. He said you can have surgery to help the babies and what happens is they would split your placenta so each baby has their own part and there are only a few hospitals that do it so you would need to travel in short notice are you able to I said yes right away these are my babies and I don’t want anything to happen. He couldn’t give me many details at the time about the surgery because he did not specialize in it and he did not want to give me wrong information but what he was sure of and what he told me is that I needed to act quickly.
As he’s telling all of this I broke down because of course I’m worried, I don’t know what to expect, I’m scared and everything is still so unclear. He told me all of the hospitals that do this laser surgery which was only about 3 hospitals one was in Long Island, NY, another in Philly and the other was in Baltimore, Maryland. He called all of them for me to find out which could get me the next day. He allowed me to wait in his office while he did and had me call my husband and have him on speaker when he came back. The hospital in Maryland was the only one I could get an appointment the quickest. The University of Maryland is where I went and from what I was told was one the best hospitals that did the surgery and often. I was in Maryland the next day.
My husband and I saw the doctor when we got there. He took a look at the babies himself and just confirmed everything. He gave us insight on the procedure. It was very risky and not a guarantee it would work. The hope was the laser would split the placenta in half and equally so each baby would have its own half. With the procedure could possibly bring on preterm labor and I was only 19 weeks the babies wouldn’t have survived that. The doctor told me that the survival rate for both babies after surgery was 60 % and 80 % for one. My heart dropped those honestly were not the best odds. My husband told the doctor right away they are going to be the 60 %. All I could do was pray and cry. I was so scared. The thought that I could lose any one of my babies or both was terrifying.
Ashley Wilson 