A Contribution by Reagan Wilda. For more information see Reagan’s section on this website.

Although it is quickly becoming a part of the past, there isn’t a day that goes by that I don’t think about all we went through in the first three months of our twin’s lives.  It may be over, but there are certainly things that will never be forgotten.  Like any new mother, there are days when I feel overwhelmed or extremely tired, but there is never a day that I don’t also feel completely blessed.  I can honestly say that I take nothing for granted.

I have written about Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), prematurity, our baby girl’s heart condition, and our other baby girl’s battle with anemia.  As traumatic as it all was, they were things we had slightly prepared ourselves for while I was pregnant.  We knew because of the TTTS, that there were several issues we were going to be facing. It wasn’t always easy but we always did our best to face them head on. Maybe I was naïve, but I just assumed that once the girls were home we would already know everything we were up against. I knew that as the girls grew there was a chance of new complications from their prematurity, but early on I had imagined that all of their diagnoses were given in the NICU. Later we would find out about Osteopenia (brittle bones) but it was actually before that, at our first doctor’s appointment out of the hospital, when I would realize there would be more to overcome soon after we were home. While my husband was in the city with one baby preparing for her heart surgery, I was home with our other baby girl getting ready for her first pediatrician appointment.

Most of the first doctor’s appointment went as I was anticipating.  They weighed her and gave her a quick but thorough exam.  Again, keep in mind it was just the day before that she was in the NICU, I couldn’t imagine that anything would change in such a short time.  Then just as I was ready to start packing up, the doctor proceeded to give me more news that I wasn’t quite prepared for.  He explained that my little girl had a hernia in her groin and that she was going to need surgery to fix it. I struggled to take it all in as I was beginning to feel like my strength and my sanity was being tested.  I remember thinking that the only way I could get through in was to take one day at a time. First we would get through  heart surgery, then we would get through this.  What other choice did we have?  The girls had already proven how strong they were, surviving delivery proved that.  They could do this, the question was, could I?  Luckily, hernia operations were fairly common in infants, and once it was repaired she would be okay.  We needed to get through so much and if I thought about it all at once, I would have crumbled.  Instead, I focused on each moment and I prayed.

A few weeks later, my husband stayed at home with our baby recovering from her heart surgery and I went with her sister back into the hospital to have her double hernia repaired. I was extremely frightened as they took my fragile four pound little girl back into the operating room.  Like so many times before this one, I wept as the nurses carried her away.  A mother in the waiting room glanced over and gave me a compassionate smile, she too was feeling the helplessness and anxiety of being apart from her baby.  I shared a bond with the parents around me just like I did in the NICU.  Only this time, I was comforted by the fact that we were going home the next day and we would spend only one night in the hospital.  That night I laid next to my little girl in her hospital bed as she slept, I knew that everything was going to be okay, after all we had made it this far and we all had each other.