My youngest son Conner was a twin and I had many complications during my pregnancy. At 15 wks. gestation I found out that one of my babies had passed on due to a rare syndrome found in 1:35,000 twin pregnancies;it is called TRAP syndrome. It is classified as twin to twin transfusion. Conner was the pump twin pumping all of the blood for both himself and his twin.
As time went on I began to have access fluid inside the placenta which was a sign of Conner becoming very stressed at around 21 wks. I was referred to a fetal surgeon who did a kind of inutero laser surgery in Florida. His name is Dr. Ruben Quintero out of St. Josephs Women’s Hospital in Tampa. This was basically my son’s only chance of survival he would be going from a 20 percent chance to live without the surgery to 85 percent of living with the surgery. So 3 days before Christmas of 2004 I had the surgery, everything went well.
Exactly 2 months after the surgery I was at home in bed when I awoke with unexplainable cramps so at 4:00 a.m. I took a cab to my local hospital and Conner arrived 23 minutes after getting there. I was scared because I was only 30 wks. gestation and after all we had been through to save him now was the risk of prematurity. Conner’s heart beat had been down to 52 beats a minute, which is not good. He was born naturally on the emergency C-Section table at 4:56 a.m. Conner came out screaming and breathing on his own weighing in at 3 pounds 4 ounces. I felt somewhat better hearing him cry;I knew he was alive. A few minutes later they told me I had a placenta abruption and lost a lot of blood, Conner had also swallowed my blood. Then, the nurse came over with this brownish thing that looked like a rubber band. She went on to tell me that the band had been around my babies upper right arm and that as soon as they pulled it off the color came back into his arm. He could move and grasp his fingers. They said if he would have been 1 week later being born he would’ve most likely had to have his little arm amputated.
Looking back, I think as his coming early as yet another blessing we’ve been blessed with along with his life. Conner is two years old now, he weighs 35 lbs. and is healthy and beautiful. He has a small scar on his arm but he has and has had full use of his arm with hardly any visible sign of the band being there except for a small scar that is in a good spot between his tricep and bicep. I look at it as his birthmark that makes him more distinguished!
