Saving the Twins - The Ultrasound...

The next morning Geoff battled traffic to make it there by 8:30 -- this wasn't a problem since I wasn't brought down for my ultrasound as early as I had anticipated. Once he got there, we waited for about an hour when I finally decided to call the nurse to ask when the ultrasound was going to happen. She came back after checking, apologized that they had the order but didn't know it, and said she could take me down right away. She got a wheelchair and I got out of bed and we prepared for the ride down to the Maternal Fetal Medicine department and for the next steps...

They brought me into a waiting area and stopped at the check in desk. The girl at the desk said I had to wait, so I was parked in the outpatient waiting area -- I was not a happy camper. There I was in a hospital gown and nothing else, sitting among the outpatients who were happy, healthy and pregnant. After waiting what seemed like forever, we were finally called back. We were brought into an ultrasound room and I got up on the table, layed down and started crying. The stress was getting to me -- I wanted to know if our girls were going to be safe and we were soon going to find out. A few minutes later Dr. Neerhof came in and introduced himself. He joined the tech behind the machine and they began the exam. I tried to relax -- having had several vaginal ultrasounds while stimulating for IVF, I tried to convince myself that it was just a routine exam and the life of our children weren't on the line. I watched Dr. Neerhof's face during the exam -- it looked grim. I started crying more -- they were silently mumbling words that neither Geoff nor I could hear, but they didn't share anything with us until the exam was over. Once they were done, Dr. Neerhof asked the tech if she needed the room immediately, or could he use it to talk to us. She let him use the room and soon she was gone. Here it was -- the grim news, we just had a feeling it was going to be bad.

Doctor Neerhof sat down in front of us and explained the concept of "funneling" -- a process in which the cervix begins the effacement process. He used his hands to make a diagram of what my cervix looked like after it had begun the funneling process. He explained that last night it was assumed I had about 1.5 to 1 centimeter of cervix left -- and this morning... it looks the same, so they were fairly confident that I have incompetent cervix and not an infection. If I had an infection, we would have seen more progressive effacement in 10-12 hours. With this information, they are comfortable proceeding with the cerclage procedure without putting us through the amniocentisis (THANK GOD)! The news we were waiting to hear -- I broke down in tears. He continued -- so, we have 3 options from this point. 1) do nothing and carry on as I was before and we will have these babies in less than one week (absolutely not an option), 2) do nothing, but put me on strict bedrest and hope for the best, 3) do the cerclage, keep me in the hospital for observation to watch for infection and other complications and then if all checks out, send me home to be on bedrest for the remainder of the pregnancy. Geoff and I immeidately agreed -- choice 3 was what we were going to do. Dr. Neerhof said, "I think that is the best option for saving this pregnancy -- let's see when we can get this done" and he picked up the phone and called Labor and Delivery. There was an OR open and they could take us immediately. He asked us if we had any questions -- we did, and he answered them, and then we were off to Labor and Delivery.