God protected my babies during a difficult pregnancy

We'd been trying for a family for a few months so when I fell pregnant we were obviously delighted.  The first few weeks progressed as you would expect, but at around 8 weeks I began to bleed a bit.  The hospital weren't interested in seeing me as it didn't sound severe but I continued to worry.  It happened on and off for days until, at around 9 weeks, another bleed had me on the phone to the local midwife in tears. She told me to go to the local hospital (not the one I was registered at for the pregnancy) and they would look after me.  I waited there to be seen and when they called me they said they couldn't find me on the system.  I told them I wasn't registered at that hospital and they started to tell me they couldn't see me!  I broke down and begged them in tears, telling them the bigger hospital where I'd chosen to be looked after weren't interested.  They relented and agreed to informally scan me to see if everything was ok.  In my head it was very binary - either the baby was ok or it wasn't, so I wasn't prepared for what happened next... I was told that not only was everything ok, but that I was expecting identical twins! From the start I had looked for bible verses to pray over the pregnancy and I took a lot of comfort from verses about how our children were in Christ Jesus, and that He was forming them together inside me.  However, our faith was still yet to face many very scary times.  Identical twins encounter many risks during pregnancy - not only is the toll on the mother's body greater but if they share a placenta like ours did then they are also sharing a circulatory system and there are several potential complications arising from this. Consequently, it is standard practice to scan twins every 2 weeks from 16 weeks onwards. At our 16 week scan we found out that are babies were girls... this was a big surprise to us since every single baby born in my husband's family had been a boy for over 100 years!  We were also told to come back in a couple of days because one of the babies was a bit smaller than the other and the consultant would want to check if there was a problem causing that.  At that appointment, our consultant, who I'd met for the first time just days before, did a lengthy scan and then broke the news that the girls had a complication called Selective Intra Uterine Growth Restriction (sIUGR) which basically means that they didn't have an equal share of the placenta and this was affecting the growth of one twin.  She ran through the various potential scenarios which we could face in the future, which included laser surgery, or even having to terminate the life of the smaller baby - something I could never have brought myself to do.  I sat there feeling numb and broke down after leaving.  We got various people tasked with praying protection over our girls. To begin with we just received extra monitoring and scans.  The important thing was always the blood flow down the umbilical cord - it was encountering resistance as the placenta struggled to provide this twin with its increasing needs.  The natural progression for that would be to deteriorate and the baby to die, and then there would be a high risk of either death or brain damage to the other twin due to their joint circulatory system through the placenta.  What we couldn't know was how quickly it would deteriorate, so they kept us monitored.  The consultant told us that she wouldn't let the pregnancy go on beyond 32 weeks and that our aim was to get to at least 28 weeks as then the babies have much greater survival statistics.  By this point our decision to be seen at the bigger hospital had turned out to be a very wise one - we had access to top consultants and there was a top level NICU based there.  God was looking out for us, even though it was hard to see at times. The weeks ticked by and sometimes things looked a little better, sometimes a little worse.  Our consultant started to tell me that she was "cautiously optimistic".  At 23 weeks, just before Christmas when our consultant was away, I was seen by another consultant instead.  At this appointment there appeared to be a slight mismatch in the levels of amniotic fluid between the babies.  This gives rise to concern about another potential complication called twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS) - it can be fast progressing and usually fatal if untreated.  We didn't quite meet the criteria for diagnosis but the doctor offered us the chance to be seen in London by the top consultant in the country in case he needed to intervene with laser surgery.  We obviously took this opportunity but prayed that intervention wouldn't be necessary.  Had TTTS been diagnosed then they can perform laser surgery to separate the circulation systems of the babies in the placenta and save their lives.  This surgery could also be used in sIUGR to prevent the harm to the larger twin if performed before the smaller one died.  In the case of TTTS we would have agreed to the surgery straight away because it's necessary to save their lives, but in our existing diagnosis we didn't want to intervene unless we had to because it could introduce extra risks. Our experience in London was much scarier than we expected, but not because the situation had changed! In fact, the fluid levels had returned to normal, praise God!  We were seen by a consultant who worked as an assistant to the top man.  She told us we didn't have TTTS but sat and re-delivered the diagnosis we were already aware of... except she made it sound MUCH scarier and more dangerous than our regular consultant had.  She was pushing for us to have the laser surgery to protect the bigger twin. Even the statistics she quoted at us seemed significantly more pessimistic than anything we'd been told before.  I asked her a crucial question: "would the laser surgery reduce the chances of survival for the small twin?"... she told me "no, it wouldn't".  But something in me (God) was very strongly resisting the idea of surgery. We were given a week (Christmas week!) to go away and think about it before going back. How had it suddenly become this severe without anything changing??!  This lady really put the fear in us that we would lose at least one, if not both, of our precious girls.  We prayed a lot, and I spent hours trawling through medical journals and reports reading the limited amount of information there is out there on our specific complication.  I already understood a lot but I needed to make sure I'd read everything there was out there to be found.  I gave thanks to God that he gave me enough brain power to be able to digest what I was reading and make a decision... that we did NOT want to intervene with surgery unless the death of the smaller twin was imminent (this was predictable from the measurements they took at scans, and so far we weren't at that point).  Everything I'd read suggested that surgery WOULD reduce the survival chances of the smaller twin, despite what we'd been told, and we couldn't choose to do that. 

Surgery was possible until 26 weeks, and then we'd face a nervous 2 weeks where if anything went wrong delivery would happen but at a dangerously young gestation.  However, we still needed to go back to London and face this woman again, and I couldn't bare the idea - I felt like she was asking me to chose which baby to keep!  At one point I'd looked her in the eyes and said through gritted teeth, "I don't think you understand, I want BOTH of my babies".  I realised that the consultant God had provided at our hospital was exactly the right person for us - she didn't sugar coat anything but she somehow made us feel safe and cared for.  I spent the day before the next London appointment trying to get hold of her on the phone and beg her to see us, it was only her first day back but she agreed that we could go first thing the following morning and she would decide whether we needed to travel on to London. I can't describe our gratitude... she spent over an hour with us discussing everything from the appointment we'd had to the situation we now found ourselves in. She never rushed us (unlike the other lady). She confirmed that I was correct about the surgery reducing the chances of the smaller twin, and I've since heard it referred to as a "soft termination" in cases of sIUGR because their survival chances are that small.  The thought that we were nearly pushed into that makes me nauseous.  We were told we didn't need to return to London and that we could continue our care with her unless anything changed before 26 weeks.  The relief was incredible, and yet at the same time we weren't home and dry yet.  Somewhere deep down I felt that things would be ok; I guess that was God; but I only half let myself listen to it because I needed to protect my heart in case I was wrong.  As the days and weeks passed our monitoring increased, overall I had 30 ultrasounds and countless CTG scans during the pregnancy.  We made it to 26 weeks and I breathed a sigh of relief that surgery was no longer a decision I'd have to make.  We then made it to 28 weeks... 29... 30... things were looking increasingly precarious for our smaller twin but not enough to force delivery yet.  Every extra day they could survive inside was a blessing, and at 30 weeks I was admitted to hospital so they could be monitored 3 times a day.  By the grace of God, we made it to 32 weeks - our biggest goal and something that for a while had seemed too much to dream.  The girls were born at 32 weeks and 1 day, and taken straight to the NICU.   The NICU days were long and also scary at times as they dealt with infections and at one point a punctured lung.  My emotions were far from stable, but I'd learnt something that I was increasingly confident in - God's protection over us was in the fact that He'd provided us with the very best care.  Our antenatal consultant was among the best in the country and got our girls into the world safely.  The NICU staff were also top rate and made sure that we eventually got to take home 2 healthy babies.  As much as I'd wanted a quick miracle, that wasn't the path God chose to take us on - instead we got to see the immense kindness, skill and professionalism of others.  Who knows if one day learning about their early experiences might inspire our girls to go into similar fields of work and save the lives of others?  So I thank God for bringing us safely home, for giving us the chance to get to know some incredible people, and most importantly for the gift of our beautiful twin girls.  You would never know now that there had ever been any concern over their survival - they are thriving and clever little 2 year olds, constantly amazing us, delighting us, and teaching more about God's love towards His children.