How To Mark an Anniversary

A year ago today we lost our twin girls. Interestingly, I realize as I write this I will tell a bit of their story, but last night I had decided that while I would write something, I was not going to write their story because it would be too hard. But it wants to come out, so I will write it.

My husband and I had a routine ultrasound appointment which the techs tried NOT to do since I had been there two weeks earlier and everything looked great. They called my doctor (my famous perinatologist) and she told them with all twin pregnancies, she has them done more often. So the tech grumpily got to work, saying our babies looked “totally healthy” just two weeks ago. What would change?! She was very quiet during our ultrasound, and then suddenly the actual radiologist was in there looking at our stuff. We didn’t get it. We didn’t know enough then that to have the real doctor decide to take a looksee signified something bad and not something good. The radiologist disappeared and then came back to let us know that our doctor wanted us to go up to labor and delivery. She said our doctor would meet us on the way up. She told us to wait for someone to take us. I said something along the lines of “oh, I work here, I know where it is.” But then a nurse showed up with a wheelchair and my first feeling of fear started creeping in.

Our doc met us on the way, and explained the situation, but it was still confusing. I still thought that we might get monitored for an hour and sent home. I think I was feeling a little cavalier about it. When we got to the front desk at L&D, my friend and colleague was there. She said, “oh no!” and I started crying. I still didn’t really get that something was really wrong, but somewhere something was being understood because I couldn’t stop the tears.

Finally, we met with the attending doctor on call. We were told we had a “50/50 chance” of saving the twins. My cervix was practically all the way open, water bags bulging. They would perform an emergency cerclage. It was my first time hearing the term. They said they would do it first thing in the morning, and asked that I sleep with my hips up all night to try to get the water bags back where they belonged in my uterus. It was a terrible night. We cried all night, and, although I wasn’t sure, I felt leaking every time I used the bed pan. In the morning they decided to check me before surgery, a surgery everyone managed to remind me was only a “50/50 chance of success at best.” They told me that I would be on bedrest the remainder of the pregnancy. It was all so scarey and overwhelming. During the exam before surgery, my water bag broke all over the place. I was still so naïve, I remember saying, “what was that warm liquid?”

This is where things get bad, and where I notice I am not feeling much like writing anymore. We had a lot of decisions to make about whether to induce, to do a D&E or to let nature take its course and wait for me to naturally go into labor. We had one twin still floating around in her unbroken water bag, and inducing seemed very awful knowing she was still in there healthy and clueless. But the risk of infection was high, and any chance of saving her was grim. I remember my doctor giving me a speech about her first priority being my health, and that infection could be very harmful to me and my ability to have future pregnancies. We decided to induce. It was awful decision. Later, we found out that the placenta had already become infected. It would have just been a matter of time. Still, that moment of deciding to end the pregnancy was one of the worst moments of an ordeal of horrible moments.

The good news is that we had a very caring doctor and nurse for our night of hell, and it turns out that it mattered. They were wonderful, and I think of them still. The social worker was my work supervisor. Odd, but comforting. We had an epidural. I remember the anesthesiology resident saying something about it being early for an epidural, and the nurse cutting him off and saying, “she’s in pain and she doesn’t need to feel pain.” It all happened quickly. I hardly felt the delivery, they were so small. We held them, we said our good-byes. We cried. The next morning, we went home and those first dark days began.

I was wondering how I would feel today given what happened a year ago. I also wondered how you mark an anniversary like this, especially with our son, who is not quite a month old, and who I love with everything I have. On the first anniversary of my father’s death a few months ago (yeah, it was a shitty few months last year) and I remember thinking that these anniversary’s are important, not because of the symbolism or the rituals, but because they force you to think of that person or that day. You can’t avoid it. I hadn’t thought of my dad too much day to day several months before his anniversary, and I don’t think of the twins everyday anymore. Yet, because it is the anniversary, I have written this story and I already feel some relief by doing that.

It also gives me a chance to think about the last year. If there is a silver lining to losing my twin girls it’s that I appreciate my life so much more. I don’t take nearly as much for granted and having gone through something so powerfully painful has and made me a better, maybe even more interesting person. When we lost the girls, pretty much the only people who understood were people who had gone through tremendous loss themselves. Knowing you can heal, or find some peace after something like this…it’s hard to explain except to say my perspective on almost everything is shifted. It’s shifted in a good way. Again, if you have to find something good about it…believe me, I am also wondering today who we missed knowing, who our girls would grow up to be, and I am feeling the sadness of that for sure.

As I write this, I glace up at my baby, who is napping at my side, and feel so much love for him. It is a thoughtful day, but it doesn’t have to be a bad one.