Welcome to our CaringBridge, a place we use to keep our family and friends updated. Visit "Ways to Help" to support the family through our GoFundMe. Donations through the "Tributes" page go to CaringBridge. We appreciate your support and words of encouragement. Here is our story.
On Sunday 8/29, Bri started having contractions and was unsure if she had Braxton Hicks or if it was something more serious. During a quick phone call with the doctor, they suggested either taking her to the emergency room or keeping watch overnight. Since Bri had previously been diagnosed with Hyperemesis Gravidarum, we figured her early symptoms had just resurfaced, which is not unusual for twins.
Things remained relatively calm overnight, and Bri woke up feeling better. But when things started to pick up again an hour later, we knew something was wrong and scheduled an emergency appointment with her OB. After an ultrasound and exam, the doctors said they did not see any major concerning issues, but told us we needed to visit the hospital just to be safe and to make sure we got ahead of what Bri was experiencing. So, we packed up our things and headed over. Once we arrived, the doctors initially thought that Bri may have been experiencing early labor symptoms and contractions as a result of COVID, the flu, or the cold when they found she had a fever. After testing ruled out those possibilities, doctors believed Bri might have an appendicitis, so they scheduled her for a CT scan and blood tests. Early afternoon, tests revealed that Bri did not have appendicitis but had sepsis and a possible blood infection that could have affected her uterus. Minutes felt like hours as things began to escalate. Bri had been experiencing contractions every 2-5 min for over 24 hrs, and nothing was helping. We only knew her water had not broken, and she had not yet dilated. They gave her some broad-spectrum antibiotics, moved us to the labor and delivery floor, and hoped for the best. We spent the rest of the evening attempting to manage the pain and working with doctors and specialists to figure out what was going on. By midnight they had tried everything to control the pain and slow the contractions but had no idea why she was sick. During this time, she had a fever of 103, her heart rate wasn't dropping below 120 BMP, and contractions were every 2 min, lasting 60-90 sec, giving her only a 30-sec break between 9/10 pain levels.
Between 1-2 am, Bri's OB, Dr. Sharpe, visited us with a neonatologist from the NICU. She explained that a pregnancy is considered 'viable' after 24 weeks, and since we were at 23 and zero, there were many potential complications. She was almost sure that the twins would be born within 24 hrs with less than a 25% chance of survival. Even if they survived delivery, they were likely to have lasting physical and mental challenges. Including anything from not developing vision/hearing to relying entirely on machines to breathe. They shared that after our conversation, we would have to decide the level of resuscitation we wanted. The first option was to let them pass naturally and spend as much time with them as possible before they went. The second option was light resuscitation, which could mean painful surgeries and a breathing tube. The third option was heavy resuscitation, which could involve chest compressions. Although we felt hopeless and terrified, we asked the doctor what we could do to give them the best chance of survival. The doctor recommended an epidural, magnesium to delay delivery, and steroids to accelerate the baby's lung development. Even though the steroid would not reach full effect until Friday, every day, hour, and minute was crucial. It was the hardest conversation that either of us had ever had. Having walked into the hospital less than 24 hrs ago feeling fine and yet overly cautious, only to discover Bri's and our boys’ lives were at risk, left us speechless. It seemed impossible.
As of 6 am on Tuesday, her contractions slowed to every 8 minutes, her heart rate dropped from 120 BPM, and her fever lowered from 103 to normal. We were visited around noon by the chief of prenatal medicine, who advised against testing the amniotic fluid since he didn't think there was an infection in the uterus. He hoped that there had been an infection in an area we could not see and encouraged her to continue improving. Later that evening, Bri's blood cultures revealed a positive result, and the infectious disease specialist confirmed that Bri had listeria. It was a scary diagnosis, but they had hoped we had already made it through the most difficult part and that Bri and the babies would be okay.
On Wednesday, they decided to take the epidural out and planned to reduce the magnesium consistently throughout the day. That afternoon, Dr. Sharpe informed us that, because listeria travels through the bloodstream, there is almost guaranteed that the babies were infected. This is scary, but antibiotics travel through the bloodstream and have been treating the boys consistently. Without testing the amniotic fluid, it would be impossible to know for sure, which could also send Bri into early labor, so they decided against it since it would not change the treatment plan. The doctors decided to keep Bri in the hospital for two weeks so she could complete the full course of antibiotics. They told us not to worry as long as nothing changed since the boys were active and had maintained a healthy heart rate. While it didn't guarantee things would return to normal, they felt they had found a solution.
On Thursday morning, Dr. Kroll, the head of the OB office, visited us to see how Bri was doing. During her 26 years as an OB, she had only seen three cases of listeria. She said it seemed we had caught things in time, and Bri should not have to worry about further contractions or preterm labor. As long as things continue as they have, the boys would make a full recovery and would not experience any long-term effects. After removing the epidural and magnesium around noon, they moved us from labor and delivery to antepartum, a lower-risk floor. The goal at this point was to regulate her system without magnesium while understanding that she may need to return to it if the intermittent contractions continued. Aside from that, we learned that the blood cultures taken on Tuesday had tested positive for listeria Thursday evening. This was disappointing, but they decided to take another round of tests, which would result in 24-48 hrs. As the evening went on, Bri began having regular contractions, which lasted throughout the night. Despite working with nurses and doctors all night, we could not control pain or slow contractions.
As we reached the early hours of Friday morning, Bri hadn't slept and was in severe pain from contractions. Around 6am, Dr. Sharpe became aware of Bri's condition and discovered they had relocated us. When Sharpe arrived at the hospital, she made sure Bri was okay, directed the staff to move us back to labor and delivery, and ordered an emergency ultrasound. The ultrasound results revealed that Bri was close to dilating and that baby A had moved down significantly. They gave her a 3x stronger dose of magnesium than before and put her back on an epidural in an attempt to slow things down. Without a negative result, it was possible that the listeria infection could still be in her system. We were advised to continue treatment and hope the infection would clear before delivery. As the day went on, they discovered traces of amniotic fluid, indicating that a bag had popped and was leaking, but had not yet ruptured. Beyond that, they had not seen as strong of a response as they had hoped and Bri was feeling strong contractions through the epidural. As we realized that we could be facing delivery within 24 hours, we got the blood lab results back, and they showed no trace of Listeria. Since the infection was cleared and the steroid shot had taken effect at 4am the previous night, we could only keep calm and know that we were doing everything we could.
As of Saturday morning, Bri was headed into day 6 of contractions and was exhausted as she had not slept more than 1-2 hours without being woken up by sharp contractions for the third day in a row. Since we were admitted, she had been given three IVs with fluids and antibiotics, blood drawn every two hours, and painkillers that weren’t working. While magnesium and epidural were keeping labor at bay, they were then trying to determine how to manage her pain. We learned around noon that Bri's white blood cell count had decreased since Friday, liver function had improved, fever had subsided, and the infection seemed contained. In the early afternoon, they figured out a decent way to manage the pain so Bri could finally rest and catch up on sleep. The rest of the day remained relatively uneventful until Bri felt an unusual contraction, much lower than it had been. The nurse rushed to get a doctor who confirmed that Bri had dilated and it was time to deliver. Nearly 20 doctors were waiting for us in the operating room, some assisting with delivery while others from the NICU. At 10:30, the on-call doctor arrived, after which Banks was born at 10:38pm, while Brooks followed at 10:42pm. Once the boys had been stabilized, the doctors rushed them to the NICU, and so their journey began.
Since that night, we have been on the hardest journey we have ever experienced. During the first week, we faced many new challenges, but we are grateful for the boys and their strength and the doctors and nurses taking care of them. The boys are fighting for their lives and have already faced many challenges that we're still working through. We are working through very hard days and are grateful for any and all support. Please keep Banks and Brooks in your prayers, and we will do our best to keep this page updated.
We know you have all been eagerly awaiting to hear an update, so thank you for your patience. Tomorrow, the boys will be 36 days old, and 29 weeks gestationally. This is a big moment for us, and getting to 1-month of life last week was really special. We take every little moment as a blessing and still are in the thick of this journey. In the past few weeks, we have been on the NICU rollercoaster, watching them grow and have little wins, as well as little set backs that can be absolutely terrifying. We have seen them make strides of progress and still have a long journey ahead, but are so proud of how strong they both are and how much life they have in them.
As of today, both boys are still on their oxygen support at a high level with an ET tube, and in the past few weeks also went on a 10-day steroid course for their lungs that is now complete. The goal of the steroid treatment is to extubate the ET tube, however, the boys still needed higher support and their tubes have not been extubated since finishing their steroid. We are looking at another round of steroids in the coming weeks to help with their lungs, but have to wait, as their hearts were affected by the steroid as a side effect. During this journey, it really is a battle of trusting the process completely and knowing what to address and focus on in the healing process first. Right now we have lungs, hearts, stomachs, feeding, growing, etc. At the moment, doctors are addressing mostly their lungs and hearts, with their lungs and respiratory healing as the highest priority.
One huge win over the past few weeks was that I got to hold Banks and Brooks, and Blake got to hold Banks! As you can imagine, this moment will forever be one of our most cherished of all time. They both LOVED being held and were able to lay on us for up to 2 and half hours each time. It took 3 nurses and 3 respiratory therapists to help get Brooks on my chest in a position that was safe for him. We are every day grateful for the NICU team and blown away by how incredible the nurses, doctors, therapists, and entire staff are!
Here are a few photos that were taken of us holding the boys:
First photo: Bri holding Banks
Second photo: Bri holding Brooks
Third and fourth photos: Blake holding Banks
We love you all and could not do this without your support- more updates to come this week! :)
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