Quick Update: Surgery Today

Yesterday was a long day of lots of ultra sounds, lots of tests, and a whole bunch of conversations about the what ifs. Here is what we have learned:

- the babies have stage 2 TTTS - Baby A's fluid pocket is 13.5, Baby B has no fluid to measure
- they are both measuring very small - Baby A's size is the 8th percentile (10 is when they start to worry) and Baby B is below the 3rd percentile for size. This is not common with TTTS, so this is something we will be dealing with as we go on in the pregnancy and hoping to resolve!
- Baby A's heart is slightly thickened, though the effects from the TTTS have been minimal on his heart. Additionally, though, he does have an extra hole in his heart that we will be watching closely. It is in a good position to clear up on its own and is not life threatening, but we will definitely be watching it after he is born.
- Everything else about them looks really great!

We are heading to the hospital to get hooked up on the antibiotics and IVs now and surgery will be at 10:00 am PST. Hopefully we will get a chance to update with more details later today and be able to share good news!

Thanks for all the prayers and fasting and messages and emails and outpouring of love! We have felt your support so strongly and are so very blessed!

LA Bound

The ultrasound yesterday morning showed both babies still doing well, but that things had progressed into stage 2 TTTS. Baby B has little to no fluid left in his sac and for the first hour of the ultrasound they could not find a bladder. At the very end we thought we saw something that maybe could have been a bladder filling up a tiny bit, but if it was indeed a bladder it was miniscule. Baby A, on the other hand, has a huge swimming pool of amniotic fluid...so much so that it is pushing up against my lungs and ribs to the point where I am always out of breath and in a significant amount of pain all day long.

After researching our options, and on the recommendation of my MFM (the specialist that has been monitoring me throughout this pregnancy), we are scheduled to meet with the surgeon in Los Angeles on Monday morning and spend the day there for an ultra sound, consult, fetal echocardiogram and prepping for surgery. The surgery is scheduled for Tuesday morning at 10 am and then we will stay in the hospital that night. They will check on the babies the next morning and if everything looks ok, we will be on our way back home! 

We feel so blessed with the timing of all of this. The wonderful Sarah (Michael's fiance) is arriving this afternoon for a trip that has been scheduled forever it seems like and she is up to the challenge of running the household while we are in LA for the surgery. We know this is not by chance but by divine design. Lucky for us, her trip is scheduled to last all the way through the week, so we will have her help as we get home as well. We have had so many willing friends and neighbors who are taking such good care of us both physically and emotionally. I tear up every time I look at my phone or turn on my computer because my inboxes are brimming with notes of love and support and prayers for our little family.

While I certainly wouldn't have chosen this trial (as if we get pick), I am so grateful for the lessons I am learning about faith, patience, service and recognizing the tender mercies of our Heavenly Father that are so abundant. In the face of all that is going on, I know that whatever the outcome, our family will be ok. I see the hand of the Lord guiding our little journey hundreds of times throughout the day and just feel overwhelmed at how blessed we are! It has been difficult to share the details and uncertainty of the situation with our kids, but their little faithful hearts are inspiring to me. They have been so wonderful about all the shuffling around from place to place. They are trying hard to be helpful about cleaning the house and taking care of their own needs and each others needs while Mom is busy talking to Doctors and Nurses on the phone. I am blessed to have such wonderful little souls in my care and look forward to things settling down a bit, so I can give them the love and attention they need and not feel like such a frenzied mess.

We are very hopeful that the surgery will go well and that the boys will be able to stabilize and recover and keep cooking for at least a few more weeks before they make their appearance. We are in very skilled and caring hands and our situation is fairly mild in comparison to many TTTS cases because it developed late and we caught it early. Our surgeon is one of the very best in the nation with amazingly high success rates. You can actually watch a segment showing him performing the surgery we will have here. It is incredible that this technology exists and to be honest, I am so excited to see MY babies on the screen like that (I will be awake for most of the surgery and able to see what they are seeing in the scope - so incredible). My biggest worry right now is really the recovery. The incision is so small that they don't even need to stitch it up, just seal it with some surgical glue, so it won't be difficult or painful in that way. I will have to minimize my activity after the surgery, however, and won't be able to pick up Ellie, do much cleaning, or do any packing at all. With a very active 19 month old, our move only 4.5 weeks out and my I-want-to-be-an-over-achiever personality, this will be extremely difficult for me, but I am grateful for the sweet friends who have been so insistent that they want to help because I know I will have to rely on them a lot.

So many of you have asked how you can help, and we would like to ask anyone who would like and is able, to join us in a fast for our little ones tomorrow (Sunday February, 24). We know that there is strength and power in prayer and fasting! I will continue posting updates to the blog throughout the week as I am able.

TTTS - things just got complicated

Today at my ultrasound we found out that our twins have TTTS (twin to twin transfusion syndrome). It is only in stage 1, which is good news, but has developed in less than 2 weeks, which is not so good news. It only occurs in about 15% of monochorionic twins (twins who share a placenta) or about 1 in 1000 pregnancies, so again, we are an anomaly. Basically what is happening is that Baby A is not only getting nutrients from the placenta, but is also stealing nutrients from Baby B through a shared connection to the placenta. At this point the only thing wrong is that Baby B has significantly less amniotic fluid and his amniotic sac is wrapped around him kind of like seran wrap. Otherwise everything looks good...both heart rates are great, kidneys are working, and bladders are filling and emptying.  As any of these indicators change, the TTTS will progress to further and scarier stages.

If the TTTS does not progress, then it will just mean more Dr. appts. to monitor growth and progression (multiple appts. with the specialist each week in addition to my OB visits which will start to happen weekly as well) and a very likely early delivery as soon as the risks of having them out become less than the risk of having them in. I reach viability tomorrow when I hit 24 weeks, which means that the babies could survive outside the womb with significant medical assistance, but of course, we want to keep them in there longer because 24 weeks is still super scary early to deliver and there is only a 50% survival rate). They gave me steroid shots to give the babies lung development a little boost in the event that we do have to deliver in the next 2 weeks.

If the TTTS does progress, though, I will likely need to fly out to get surgery early next week because the surgery cut-off is around 25-26 weeks. The surgery has a really great success rate (85% survival for one twin, 70% survival for both), but of course, intrauterine laser surgery is not without significant risk. This will also most likely lead to an earlier delivery (34-36 weeks) and a really complicated insurance mess. My Dr. is saying he will send us to California for the surgery, but it looks like there is a practice that can perform the surgery in Salt Lake at St. Marks Hospital, so I am going to talk to him about going there instead so we will have a place to stay and a good support group to take care of us.

So, tonight, I worry and I am sure I will worry tomorrow and Thursday too until I go in on Friday morning to see how things are progressing and find out what course of action we will be taking. This is certainly turning out to be a challenging season of our lives, but I know that there is a reason we are being asked to endure it and I have faith that we are being watched over and that the Lord is mindful of us. I am thankful every day that my partner on this journey is Seth...he is amazing in every way and not only picks up all the slack and makes me feel like I am doing a great job, but does it cheerfully and is the greatest father to our children through it all. I think that actually raising our twins may seem easy after the craziness of this pregnancy...here's hoping anyway!

And then it all came together...

This is the story of how everything worked out with our housing situation.

To understand the whole scope of the story, I think it helps to understand how we got where we are, but it is kind of long, so feel free to skip down to the part about where we find a house if you want. :) Back in August when we were looking for a rental home here in Tucson, we thought we knew what we wanted. We wanted something with between 2400 and 3000 sq ft, 4+ bedrooms, a fenced pool and grass in the backyard. We knew the school we wanted the kids to attend and the boundaries of that school covered 2 different wards, so I had contacted both wards in advance to see if they had any insider tips about places for rent and found that both were great wards with a lot of young kids.

When I came out to look at houses, I looked at house after house after house and nothing really seemed to be a perfect fit. It was as if every house we looked at had some major flaw. Case in point, the first house we looked at (which is the house we ended up renting) didn't have a fenced pool, was a little smaller than we were looking for and was dotted with bubble glass throughout the house. When I got home from my trip, I was thinking of going with a house that would have been a pretty good fit for us, but was a little higher priced, and the more I got into the application process the more I determined that that leasing company was a nightmare to work with and just felt uneasy about the whole thing, so we decided not to apply for that home. In fact, we decided not to apply for any of the homes I looked at because we just didn't feel that "this is where you are supposed to be" feeling with any of them, like we had with our home in Lake Oswego. After making this decision, the agent that had showed me the first house called to follow up. I told her it was a no go and hung up. Seth and I got to talking about it though, and determined that the location was so great (it was the shortest commute option for Seth) and the price was so low, that maybe despite the other downsides, we could make it work...if we could get them to install a pool fence. Fast forward a whole bunch of phone calls, and we worked out a pool fence deal and had a great feeling about moving forward with the house. Everything just fell into place.

When we arrived in Tucson, we were pleasantly surprised to find that the home wasn't as weird inside as I had remembered and the rooms were also bigger than I remembered and the one level floor plan was just fantastic! Not to mention that the yard was perfect for our needs, the pool was so fun, the mountain and sunset views were so stunning, the bus stop across the street was so convenient and the park across the street was just the icing on the cake! We found our ward to be so friendly and wonderful and started to get involved right away. Then some young families moved into our neighborhood and onto our street and the kids were in heaven. It just seemed like everything had fallen into place and we thought...we can totally just stick around here with this super cheap rent for a few years. Then when we found out twins were headed our way, I freaked out about how in the world we would fit them in this house when already we were feeling a little cramped. But I sketched out some room plans and figured out where we would put all the beds and after talking through it, again we felt like we could make it work and decided that we would just stay put. All the while I continued watching the rental market and receiving notifications when new homes that matched our criteria went on the market, and there wasn't anything through this whole time that better met our needs than where we were.

So after all of that, finding out that we would need to move was hard. Not just because moving is hard, or because we are expecting twins, or because there was nothing on the market, but because getting to where we were was a rocky road and we finally felt at peace with sticking around there for a while.

Bringing us up to now. After looking at every single house than even kind of matched our criteria and having multiple leasing companies not return my calls (weird and annoying), I was wondering if we were ever going to find something. My mom and John wanted to come the week of our move to help and kept trying to figure out when to book, and finally they just decided to book the last week of March whether that was the move or not because I just felt like it might be a while before we found something that would work. Every time Seth and I sat down and reviewed the options, we ended the conversation feeling like none of the options before us were the right option, and that we would just have to be patient and keep looking. So, when our neighbor brought his daughter and her husband over to meet Seth the other night (I was at scouts) and told him about their home that they wanted to rent, I didn't get my hopes up. Sure on paper it sounded perfect: 3200 sq ft, 5 bedrooms, a large playroom on the main level, 3 car garage, walking distance from school and the ward building, grass, a pool and a hot tub in the backyard, sunset views, fruit trees, lots of storage space and a quiet dead end street in a kid friendly neighborhood; but there were a couple of downsides: we would have to switch wards, and the house is too close to the school to offer bus service. The more Seth told me about it though, the more I got the feeling that this was going to be the house. 

The next morning, my neighbor told me how his daughter felt like meeting us was an answer to her prayers. He explained that they had been searching for a house with horse property for months and months and finally put in a low ball offer on a home and it had been accepted that day. In fact, that is why they were at his house, to tell him the big news and about their new stress of finding someone to rent the home, when he mentioned us and brought them over to meet Seth. Then I got a message from a friend in our ward telling me she had heard we were considering renting from this family and how wonderful they are and how great they would be to work with. All day, I just had this feeling that this was going to work out, but I tried not to get excited because I hadn't even seen the house yet. That afternoon I got a call from the family and they invited us over to come and see the home that evening. We walked in and even though the walls were pink (and purple and red and blue and yellow...the late 80s versions of all of them) and the light fixtures were outdated and brass and the kitchen countertops were pink laminate, I surprisingly didn't get hung up on it because I knew this was the house. I finally had that feeling of "this is the place" like I felt in Lake Oswego that I had been waiting for. Better yet, because of their closing date on their new house, the house would be ready for us the last week in March...right when my mom and John would be in town...and right before I hit 30 weeks which was my mental "moving deadline".

After the kids had a grand old time playing on the swingset in the backyard (which sadly won't be staying), eating homebaked cookies, and making themselves right at home while we discussed details, we went home to discuss. Seth and I agreed that the whole house would have to be painted before we could move in our stuff, but the thought of it was so overwhelming. I obviously wasn't going to be up on a ladder painting the 2 story walls in the entry way at 30 weeks pregnant, and 3200 sq ft is more than Seth could handle painting on his own (amidst working full time, moving, and taking care of a 30 week pregnant wife and 4 kids). And after hearing how much more the electrical bill would be in that house vs. our house, we felt like a little bit lower rent than what we had discussed with them would be more managable...yet, it still felt like it was going to work out. At 4 am, though, I was wide awake tossing and turning wondering if we would offend them by asking if they would take a little less in monthly rent since it was already pretty low compared to what we have seen and worrying about how to possibly get the house painted to where we could move in without it being super stressful. I had tried to distract myself by picking out paint colors and mapping out where furniture would go and at 6 am as I was scrolling through DIY countertop refinishing projects on my iPhone pinterest app, I got a text message. "We have decided to hire someone to paint the house neutral colors and install neutral countertops so it will be easier for you to add accent colors if you want. Let me know what you think." What an answer to my prayers! I was completely humbled and so grateful. 

We debated about asking for a lower rent before Seth left for work, but we determined that this was going to be the house for us either way. Seth suggested we ask so we didn't regret not asking, so when she called later that evening to see what we were thinking, I asked. She agreed to the lower rent without hesitation and I couldn't help but be completely overcome with the thought that Heavenly Father had worked it all out again! As I thought back on everything that had happened since we moved from Portland, I could see that all of it was leading us here. I wonder if getting to know people in both wards was a part of the plan for us. I wonder if He just knew that kids being able to ride the bus would be essential during the first trimester + of this pregnancy. I am pretty sure I wouldn't have agreed to another house with more than 3000 sq ft before I found out we were having twins and coming from our Lake Oswego house, I was very hesitant about stairs, so I wonder if we just needed to be groomed into the mindset that this would be the right house for us. I am so grateful that our lives are guided by a loving Heavenly Father who can see the whole picture. I never doubted that it would all work out, but I wish I could have worried less about the how it was going to work out element. I am so happy that we could be an answer to someone else's prayers just as they are an answer to ours.

So there you go! We sign a lease next week and we move the last week of March! Hooray for things coming together! Now to pack...