Friday, May 7, 2010
Still looking good
Mishael was a little worried since she wasn't feeling as much movement. So we took a visit to Dr C. who took a quick look at the babies. All 3 were moving all over the place and doing great! These girls keep us on our toes already!
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Latest Update
The day after the surgery Dr Paek did a follow-up ultrasound. The babies all are looking good and a little better. She is not having any cervical changes and no signs of pre-term labor. They did give her some medicine to take to stop labor if she has too many contractions. She will have a follow-up ultrasound in Missoula with Dr Utter weekly x 4 weeks following the surgery. They were impressed with how well Mishael's body is handling everything and how perfect her labwork, cervix etc. looked. Baby A has less fluid (the same amount she had after surgery after they took off 1600ml) and her heart function looks a little better. Baby C has more fluid and is now on the low end of normal instead of too low, she also had a small amount of fluid in her bladder (which is an indicator of how dehydrated she is--before she had none). Baby B also had more fluid so there must have been some transfusing going on with baby B also. She explained she found 2 large connections between baby A-C and 2 small ones between baby A-B and 3 between baby C-B. So there was a total of 7 connections. The doctor seems very optomistic about the surgery and now its a waiting game. They will do a follow-up echocardiogram on baby A probably about 21 weeks. We drove back from Seattle yesterday and arrived back home late last night.
Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Surgery is done
Maria here again. I'm sitting in the hospital room with Mishael. Surgery went well, I got to be in the operating room and watch the whole procedure. We were able to see the the one of the baby's face's and hands etc. with the camera. It was amazing! The nurses and Doctors have all been absolutely wonderful. I have been extremely impressed with this hospital (coming from an opinionated nurse that's a good compliment!) Mishael's nurse told her that she had 2 of her babies at home too! :)
Anyway, Mishael was sorta freaked out about getting a spinal but after she got settled in she was able to relax a little and watch the surgery and ask questions. The surgeons (there were two of them) were great and explained things as they went. It took about 5 seconds to cauterize the large connections between baby A and baby C. Then they spent the rest of the time looking for connections between baby A and B and B and C. They found a few and cauterized them and also spent some time figuring out where the babies are connected to the placenta. They found that baby C doesn't have much placenta and may not be able to recover but its really hard to say and the Dr said there's no reason to believe she won't make it but there's always that possibility. They were able to disconnect all the babies completely from eachother so if for some reason one of them doesn't make it, it wouldn't affect the other ones. They also took 1600 ml of fluid off of baby A, so Mishael's stomach is a bit smaller now!
Mishael is resting in her room and Eliza is here too. They are family friendly and will allow her to stay in the room with Mishael.
That's all for now. If all goes well she will go home in the morning!
Anyway, Mishael was sorta freaked out about getting a spinal but after she got settled in she was able to relax a little and watch the surgery and ask questions. The surgeons (there were two of them) were great and explained things as they went. It took about 5 seconds to cauterize the large connections between baby A and baby C. Then they spent the rest of the time looking for connections between baby A and B and B and C. They found a few and cauterized them and also spent some time figuring out where the babies are connected to the placenta. They found that baby C doesn't have much placenta and may not be able to recover but its really hard to say and the Dr said there's no reason to believe she won't make it but there's always that possibility. They were able to disconnect all the babies completely from eachother so if for some reason one of them doesn't make it, it wouldn't affect the other ones. They also took 1600 ml of fluid off of baby A, so Mishael's stomach is a bit smaller now!
Mishael is resting in her room and Eliza is here too. They are family friendly and will allow her to stay in the room with Mishael.
That's all for now. If all goes well she will go home in the morning!
Monday, May 3, 2010
Update on Mishael
This is Maria, I'm posting the latest on Mishael's triplets! I am in Seattle with Nancy (Mishael's Mother-in-law) and Mishael and Eliza. After wandering around a huge hospital trying to figure out where we were supposed to be we sat in a 4 hour long ultrasound appointment. The US tech was very knowledgeable and happy to show us what she was looking at and explain what things meant. Everyone that came in to talk to MIshael knew all about her case and had reviewed her charts etc. and seemed to know what they were talking about.
First, the US tech did a brief overview of all the babies to see where they were and make sure they had heartbeats. They all had good heartbeats above 130. Then she told us they are all girls!! Yay! Then she went back and spent about 45 min a piece on each baby, measuring specifics parts of the babies. She measured all their little blood vessels and arteries and got different views of their hearts and even measured specific bones.
Then the Dr came in and discussed the results and explained everything and answered questions. This is what we learned:
They are definitely identical triplets with one placenta. They have 3 vessel cords (which is better than 2). Two of them have Stage 3 Twin to Twin transfusion syndrome.
Baby A is the recipient and is getting more fluid (blood etc) than she should from baby C. Because of this, her body is in fluid overload and her little heart cannot handle all of the extra fluid. She is very active because she has so much fluid to move around in so she is hard to measure because she is constantly moving. Because of this, they couldn't' get all the views of her heart that they wanted to but they could tell the heart function was compromised. They are actually more worried about baby A than baby C because of the fluid overload. They also said there is a possibility baby A has a heart defect but will not be able to tell until the baby is bigger and they can do an echocardiogram and see more views of the heart. This would be a separate issue than Twin-to-Twin transfusion syndrome but the extra fluid would make it even harder for the baby's heart to function right in addition to a heart defect. Baby A measures with way too much fluid but as far as growth goes is 18 wks 5 days.
Baby B measures 18 wks 2 days and everything looks ok but her fluid is on the low end of normal so there's a possibility there's some transfusion going on there too. They will check the vessels during surgery and fix them if there is some shared vessels between baby B too so they wouldn't have to repeat the surgery later with baby B.
Baby C measures 17 wks, so not too far behind! However her fluid is way too low and she is very dehydrated and has nothing in her bladder and is showing signs of dehydration with the tests. However her bladder is still visible and her Heart seems to be functioning properly at this point.
As a result of these tests, the surgery will occur tomorrow morning. The procedure is done under spinal anesthesia and Mishael will be awake the whole time and can watch the whole procedure on the monitor. They will also put the surgery on a DVD and she can take it home and watch it afterwards! Cool huh? They will keep her in the hospital overnight to monitor for any bleeding or premature labor and then she will have a follow-up appointment on Wed morning and she can go home wed if everything looks good. The next two weeks will be the crucial time to see if the babies will do well with the procedure.
The Dr said the chances of losing the babies is 90% if she doesn't do surgery and the risk of losing the babies because of the invasive surgery is 10%. So the risk is worth it at this point. The Dr said she has only seen a few identical triplets before but surprisingly just did this same surgery on another set of identical triplets on Friday...So far so good, with those ones...
That's about all I can think of right now. I'll keep you updated after surgery tomorrow.
Maria
First, the US tech did a brief overview of all the babies to see where they were and make sure they had heartbeats. They all had good heartbeats above 130. Then she told us they are all girls!! Yay! Then she went back and spent about 45 min a piece on each baby, measuring specifics parts of the babies. She measured all their little blood vessels and arteries and got different views of their hearts and even measured specific bones.
Then the Dr came in and discussed the results and explained everything and answered questions. This is what we learned:
They are definitely identical triplets with one placenta. They have 3 vessel cords (which is better than 2). Two of them have Stage 3 Twin to Twin transfusion syndrome.
Baby A is the recipient and is getting more fluid (blood etc) than she should from baby C. Because of this, her body is in fluid overload and her little heart cannot handle all of the extra fluid. She is very active because she has so much fluid to move around in so she is hard to measure because she is constantly moving. Because of this, they couldn't' get all the views of her heart that they wanted to but they could tell the heart function was compromised. They are actually more worried about baby A than baby C because of the fluid overload. They also said there is a possibility baby A has a heart defect but will not be able to tell until the baby is bigger and they can do an echocardiogram and see more views of the heart. This would be a separate issue than Twin-to-Twin transfusion syndrome but the extra fluid would make it even harder for the baby's heart to function right in addition to a heart defect. Baby A measures with way too much fluid but as far as growth goes is 18 wks 5 days.
Baby B measures 18 wks 2 days and everything looks ok but her fluid is on the low end of normal so there's a possibility there's some transfusion going on there too. They will check the vessels during surgery and fix them if there is some shared vessels between baby B too so they wouldn't have to repeat the surgery later with baby B.
Baby C measures 17 wks, so not too far behind! However her fluid is way too low and she is very dehydrated and has nothing in her bladder and is showing signs of dehydration with the tests. However her bladder is still visible and her Heart seems to be functioning properly at this point.
As a result of these tests, the surgery will occur tomorrow morning. The procedure is done under spinal anesthesia and Mishael will be awake the whole time and can watch the whole procedure on the monitor. They will also put the surgery on a DVD and she can take it home and watch it afterwards! Cool huh? They will keep her in the hospital overnight to monitor for any bleeding or premature labor and then she will have a follow-up appointment on Wed morning and she can go home wed if everything looks good. The next two weeks will be the crucial time to see if the babies will do well with the procedure.
The Dr said the chances of losing the babies is 90% if she doesn't do surgery and the risk of losing the babies because of the invasive surgery is 10%. So the risk is worth it at this point. The Dr said she has only seen a few identical triplets before but surprisingly just did this same surgery on another set of identical triplets on Friday...So far so good, with those ones...
That's about all I can think of right now. I'll keep you updated after surgery tomorrow.
Maria
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Hi everyone. I'm going to start a little with yesterday. I had a quick prenatal with Julia which we don't draw any real conclusions from as this pregnancy requires more expertise but I like doing it and it lets us connect and look at the little things, blood pressure and measurements etc. I am at 18 weeks and I measured 33 centimeters! wow no wonder I've been feeling so big! anyway I noticed that I wasn't getting the movement that I had been getting on my left side and although the Doppler isn't that accurate with 3 heartbeats we tried anyway and were fairly sure that there was a heartbeat there and that set my mind somewhat at ease. So then I go to my ultra sound today and I found out why my baby isn't moving so much. OK again we have Babies A, B, and C turns out we have a case of twin to twin transfusion between Babies A and C the blood is not flowing correctly and Baby C isn't getting what it needs to grow in result baby A has a bunch more fluid and Baby C has almost nothing, making it sucked up against the side and it really cant move. The size was another big issue babies A and B are the right size.. 18 weeks and Baby C is 15 weeks in size. meaning that sense my last ultrasound baby C hasn't grown at all. So where do we go from here? we really don't have more then one option to go to Seattle and do a procedure than they try to laser the place where the 2 babies blood flow connects they say that there are allot of successes with this and our only other option is do nothing which could make us loose at least the 2 babies. anyway i will know more soon don't know when Ill have time for updates but please everyone. Pray I know God can do anything so we will see where He wants to bring us
Thursday, April 22, 2010
this is baby B
A and C's heads and B's stomach
By the way we have decided to wait till my husband get back in July to find out the sexes just something we can do together. And yes we both are very exited the way we look at it is God doesnt bless many people with 3 kids at once but He did us so we jsut thank Him for that
My last ultrasound
so its been 3 weeks sense my last ultrasound and I finally found the time to post what happened sorry it took so long. Anyway when we started my first question was are all 3 babies alive? when I saw movement everywhere I was temporarily satisfied and I let the ultrasound tech do her thing with measuring etc and just prayed that the news would either be the same on baby A or better I just cant handle worse news right? The night before the ultrasound my husbands cousin whom had miscarried a twin lost her second baby at 16 weeks. her mom, is Nancy and she takes me to all my appointments along with my mom, kind of as an acting mother in law for me (but not a scary one=) anyway so we were a little more on edge and really praying for good news. WE tried asking the ultrasound tech how baby A looked and she didn't really feel comfortable saying she said she would let the doctor look and tell us but she did show us baby A's heartbeat just to be reassuring. When the doctor came in he let us know right away the little bit of fluid under baby A;s skin was so minimal that it really wasn't worth mentioning Wow although I still pray every day for my 3 little ones I also thank God that He has taken care of my little baby A
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