1 Year Ago

On this day one year ago, our lives changed forever. On that day, we drove to the hospital expecting to hear that my cramping was Braxton Hicks contractions and that I should go home and rest. Instead, my water broke as I got out of our vehicle, and we knew in that moment that we would not be leaving the hospital pregnant.

We listened in disbelieve as our doctor told us that our babies were likely not going to survive, and that we should really consider inducing labor to end the pregnancy. I cannot begin to describe what I was feeling at that moment, but I was definitely angry and scared. This day would begin a 45 day hospital stay that felt like a hundred years. The uncertainty and anxiousness combined with the presence of pregnancy hormones, unfamiliarity of my surroundings, and complete loss of control over my life, made each day simply exhausting.

The six weeks that I spent sitting around in a hospital bed left me completely unprepared for what was coming. The preparation we received for our inevitable Neonatal Intensive Care Unit experience was an hour long conversation with a neonatologist, and a wheelchair ride down the hallway of the unit. The doctor was extremely somber, and told us little about the reality of the situation in which we might find ourselves. Instead, he spent the hour telling us about all of this different medical conditions that neonates are prone to and a bunch of statistics about the chances that a singleton born at different gestational ages would have of developing them. After each of these statistics, he informed us that they didn’t apply to us because we not only had twins, but one of them was ruptured. Therefore, the stats were of little use to us.

It sounds really dumb, but if he would have brought with him a piece of paper and a potato and said that each of your babies will be small enough to fit on this piece of paper and weigh about as much as this potato… well I think we would have been more prepared for our initial introduction to our children. Obviously he had no way of knowing exactly what was going to happen, and I think even in our state, that was understood.

Since December 30th, when our babies were born at 26 weeks gestation (14 weeks early), we have been through the most profound journey. Many answers have been discovered, but many mysteries still lie in our future. One thing is certain, they wanted to be here, and our lives will never be the same again.

The question that looms heaviest on my mind is why did Taylor’s water break at 20 weeks? Unfortunately, no one can answer this for me. I have spent many moments in the past year thinking about what happened, and wondering if I had done one or two things differently, if it all would have ended up this way anyhow. We have seen first hand the power of neonatal research as our children were given 0% chance of survival on this day one year ago. We spent the next four weeks praying for another day. December 15th was the “magic” day when the babies became viable in the eyes of our hospital (24 weeks gestation). Every one of those days we were benefactors of the March of Dimes. So today we are asking you to please donate to the March of Dimes fight against prematurity. The following links will send you to their current promotion called “Banding Together”. Jon and I have donated $20 to create a virtual band for each of our babies. Every dollar will help babies like ours. Your donation is greatly appreciated!!! Thank you for thinking about Taylor and Alivya on this day!

This is the link for Alivya’s band:
http://www.marchofdimes.com/prematurity/b.asp?band_id=31295

This is the link for Taylor’s band:
http://www.marchofdimes.com/prematurity/b.asp?band_id=31294

This is the link if you would like to create a new band:
http://www.marchofdimes.com/howtohelp/how_help_c4_1.asp