At the beginning of May 2013, I found out that I was pregnant. While, this was unexpected, it was not unwelcome. I picked an obstetrician and went to my first appointment. At this appointment, my doctor listened to the baby’s heartbeat and stated, “That’s a very strong heartbeat.” What he didn’t say was that it was too strong. He asked me to set up an appointment for the next day to get my ultrasound. Since it was just me, I asked my mom if she wanted to tag along to the ultrasound appointment, and ofcourse, she said yes. As I’m lying there and the Ultrasound Technician begins looking at the baby while I’m just jabbering on because I’m nervous, she just kind of stops and is sitting there with a big grin on her face. When I finally shut up, she says, “There’s two there!” Well, needless to say I was shocked and that was the beginning of me being tied to ultrasound machines seemingly 24/7 for the next 7 months. Due to my type of pregnancy, my girls were at risk for Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome, requiring me to get ultrasounds taken with Neonatalogists every 2 weeks about an hour away from where I lived. It was also determined that they would need to be delivered at 37 weeks and no later. That would have been New Years! Throughout my entire pregnancy, the babies developed normally and as far as they were concerned it was a perfect pregnancy. However, I experienced every pregnancy symptom except morning sickness. Let me tell you how awful PUPPP is. It is awful. I even nearly passed out during most of my ultrasounds due to pressure on my Vena Cava. On the Sunday before Christmas of that year, I woke up feeling yucky. I tried to chalk it up to being very pregnant, but it seemed just a level above my normal pregnancy miserableness. My blood pressure was slightly elevated, so my mom suggested that I call my obstetrician. I did, and he had me go to labor and delivery where they admitted and monitored me. It was determined Tuesday evening that I had developed preeclampsia and that my girls would be born the next morning (Christmas Eve) via emergency c-section. Anyone who has ever been through the prep stages of an emergency c-section knows how anxiety-inducing it is. By the time they had me in the operating room, I was shaking so hard, I thought I was going to bruise something from bouncing on the table. Minutes before the anesthesiologist was going to give me my spinal, my labwork came back and I had developed HELLP. This required general asnesthesia, which I was fine with by that point, as I was NOT enjoying anything. I was just panicking. The following part of the story is part memory and part relayed to me by family and doctors as I was recovering from the anesthesia (Which I don’t do gracefully) and recovering from hemorrhaging. Needless to say, I don’t actually remember much of the next three days. That evening after I was stabilized, I got to go to the Special Care Nursery and meet my babies. They had indeed developed TTTS shortly before birth and it had progressed rapidly causing one baby to essentially have blood the consistency of ketchup. What I remember them saying was that it was so thick with hematocrit, that she was at risk of having a stroke. That baby was Goldie, and she was the recipient of TTTS. Gladys was the donor and she was born perfectly healthy, but unable to breathe completely on her own at 4lbs 8ozs. Goldie was 5lbs 7ozs. They were born at 36 weeks. The next day, on Christmas, Goldie was transported to the closest children’s hospital, an hour away, for a partial blood transfusion. Goldie stayed there for a little over two weeks to monitor her hematocrit levels, and to learn to eat and breathe on her own. It is now 10 months later, and both girls are perfectly healthy. You’d never have known how close to death they were and that they were even premature. The care that Gladys received here at our local Special Care Nursery was amazing and the care that Goldie got at the NICU was stellar. I did not know that people could go to work and care 210% like the nurses and nurse practitioners did who took care of her. I was only able to come see her every couple of days for a couple of hours due to still recovering, finding a babysitter for her sister, and finding a ride as I was not able to drive and it was so reassuring to know that the nurses loved on her so much.