A Blizzard girl from Texas saved her sister's life by "giving a distress signal" that caused doctors to deliver the baby early. So both are healthy now.
Poppy McBride "forced" doctors to deliver early as her heartbeat began to fluctuate at 31 weeks and 5 days.
Young mother Leah McBride was 28 years old
and expecting twins. Despite the fact that Poppy was the smaller of the twins, she was perfectly healthy: she weighed 765 grams and her heart was fine.
Her sister Winnie, who was born weighing 1 kg 586 g, had problems, but doctors were not worried about her during pregnancy. As a result, Winnie was born with underdeveloped lungs and was taken to the intensive care unit.
The doctors told Mom that Poppy saved her sister's life. If they had waited any longer, Winnie wouldn't have survived.
Leah (a housewife from Lake Jackson, Texas) and her husband, Austin, 27, learned at 21 weeks that their girls had a blood transfusion from twin to twin. When a blood flow imbalance occurs, one baby becomes the donor and the other becomes the recipient of all the nutrients in the womb.
Although Leah was later told that the chances of both babies surviving were slim, she successfully underwent surgery to correct a blood imbalance and was up to 31 weeks and five days.
So, Winnie survived, but at 14 days old she had to have an operation to remove a fluid buildup in her brain. After that she luckily recovered.
Poppy was healthy, but she had to stay in the hospital to gain weight before going home.Winnie was discharged 52 days later and Poppy two days later. Now the twins are doing fine.
Except that Poppy is still much smaller than her sister in weight.
Leah said that according to the doctors, tiny Poppy saved her sister's life. "Poppy's heartbeat was very fast, so they had to deliver her, and when she was born, it turned out she was perfectly fine".
Doctors say she was "giving distress signals" the way she could because she knew her sister wouldn't survive if she didn't induce labor right away. Even now three-year-old Poppy cares for Winnie, they are very close.
Leah and Austin were thrilled when they found out they were expecting twins in January 2019 after a year of trying to conceive.
Then the couple found out they were expecting identical twin girls, and they had to watch carefully as events unfolded.
Leah had two monthly ultrasounds to make sure her pregnancy was going well, and she thought everything was fine until an in-depth exam at 21 weeks showed something was wrong.
"Of course, I started googling everything that could be wrong, and I came across information about twin-to-twin blood transfusions," explained Leah.
"The doctor said he could barely see one twin and the other was surrounded by a lot of fluid."
Thus, Leah was diagnosed with stage three twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome and was advised to terminate Poppy's pregnancy before term to give Winnie a better chance of survival.
"The girls' size difference was already 48%, and they were worried that Poppy would have a heart attack because she was passing all the nutrients to Winnie, and Winnie might have a stroke," Leah said.
"I didn't want to choose one child over another." So I told my boss, whose nanny I worked for, about the situation, and she sent me the contact information of a family friend whom I should have called for advice."
Then Leah decided to go to Memorial Hermann Hospital in Houston, where she was told that the surgery might be more successful than previously thought and was given a night to rest: "We spent the night in shock over the events of the day and prayed that we would still have two hearts beating the next day."
The next morning, Leah underwent surgery, during which she was kept awake while the doctors worked to correct the blood imbalance. The surgery was successful, and Leah was sent home with bed rest and regular medical check-ups.
At 27 weeks and 6 days, Leah's water broke, she was rushed to the delivery room and given steroids to stop the contractions.
The girls are doing fine now, except Winnie has to wear glasses, and they're best friends.
"They're both smart, but Winnie is savvier than Poppy, and at three years old she can read books and remembers what she reads," says Leah. - "I recently tried to move their beds apart, but they didn't agree. They are both wonderful", - said Leah.
Source: epochtimes
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