Esmee & Jasmijn by Saskia - Holland

TTTS Parent Stories: Esmee and Jasmijn

I’d like to introduce myself and tell you my story,

I’m Saskia, 32 years old and I’m from Holland .

I was pregnant for the first time and at 13 weeks we learnt that we were expecting twins.

We were so happy with this good news. At 21 weeks my stomach was too big and it was painful. I had an echo and they saw a lot of amniotic fluid with one of the children. The doctor said over the phone that we could go home and come back after one week. Something was wrong but we didn’t know what and they told us nothing.

After a dreadful week with a lot of pain we were going back for another echo. It was not very good; the whole situation was getting worse. Our children suffered from TTTS

We were in shock. We didn’t know all the risks about this syndrome. We were sent to the academic hospital were they treat TTTS. We were very sad by hearing the risks about the treatment, but we had to choose something. So we chose laser surgery. The doctor told us he had very good results with this operation but there were risks. We could loose one of our children, or both during the operation or in the weeks thereafter. We didn’t have a real choice. The next day I had the operation. It went very well, without any complications. The doctor was satisfied, so were we. The day after we went home because our children seems to be normal.

We had to come back four days after the surgery for another echo to see how the children were doing. They were very optimistic, which made us very happy. We went home again. I had to lay down for six weeks because my cervix of uterus was very short because of the pressure of the amniotic fluid. During the operation, the doctor had already taken almost 3 liters of fluid out of my womb.

Saturday May 18th, after 23 weeks of pregnancy and 10 days after surgery, I felt contractions and I became very scared. We called the hospital and we went immediately. I was already in labor and they couldn’t do anything for us anymore. We had to accept the situation. Our both girls were born four hours later and died half an hour after they were born. I had contractions because of TTTS and the B- streptococcal bacterial (GBS).

For all the parents who have lost their children too, take care and you can mail me if you want to.…