Multiple Births!

Disclaimer:  This post touches on some difficult subjects such as pregnancy loss and the risks associated with multiple births.  It may not be advisable to read if you're currently pregnant, especially with multiples, although I have tried to deal with the subject as sensitively as possible.

This evening I made a mistake.  I absolutely love One Born Every Minute and tonight I decided to watch an episode I recorded last week.  It was a special about twin and triplet births, so I thought it would be informative and have 2 or 3 times more babies to coo over - how could I go wrong?

The episode followed 4 couples, each with their own story and none without complications.  Whilst the issues were dealt with sensitively and the outcomes were mostly happy, it really did highlight the risks of multiples and made me fully appreciate why they will only transfer one embryo into me at a time.  With 2 embryos being transferred, in a young fertile woman, the risk of twins is majorly increased.  Even with a single embryo, due to the IVF, there is a slight increased risk of twins but not much more than a normal pregnancy.  It does however mean that if I do become pregnant with twins, they would be identical (from that one embryo splitting) and share a placenta.

In twin (or more) pregnancies where 2 babies share a placenta there is a risk of a condition called twin-to-twin transfusion.  This means that the babies share some of the blood vessels and one baby effectively haemorrhages into the other, leaving one considerably smaller baby.

During this episode, one of the couple's had conceived twins naturally but quite early on it was noted that one baby was a lot larger than the other and a diagnosis of twin-to-twin transfusion was made.  The couple were seen by a specialist in London and it was advised that the woman undergo a procedure to separate the babies, ideally leaving them both with a separate placenta, so that the babies could both grow normally.  They were informed that if they did not go through with the procedure there was a very high risk of losing both babies.  It showed the procedure and explained that there would be a 2 week wait for them to find out if it had worked.

2 weeks later, the couple return for a scan and only one heartbeat can be found.  The cameras were on them throughout the appointment so you really are going through the emotions with them and I'm not ashamed to say that I cried for them both.  I cannot even begin to imagine the elation of hearing the larger baby's heartbeat, only to be followed by complete despair when they were informed they had lost the smaller baby.

I've always loved the idea of having twins, especially as we will only have NHS funding for IVF until we have one healthy baby.  I thought it was the ideal way of having more than one child without having to shell out thousands of pounds for a second round of IVF.  But if I'm honest, I'm much happier only being able to transfer one embryo (and maybe having to do that a few times before we succeed) that using more than one and ending up in a situation like this.

Don't get me wrong, conceiving twins is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination.  There are many healthy multiple babies born every day and, likewise, even a single pregnancy is not without its risk.  But for me the thought of waiting a bit longer for a healthy baby is still the better option and IF twins occur naturally, I'll be elated (and a little nervous) just like I will with a single pregnancy.

Maybe, until this process is over I should lay off the One Born Every Minute episodes!