"I've found another one..."

Many of you have probably heard this story but it's where things all began...

Chris & I found out we were expecting on the weekend of my brother's wedding in October 2008. We had waited forever for this moment and it was finally here! We were so excited to celebrate this special moment in the Outer Banks with our family. Only a few weeks later, after a trip to the ER and thinking we lost the pregnancy, we found out we were expecting not just one baby...but TWO!!! We were over the moon...twins! But it didn't stop there. I followed up with my OBGYN 10 days after the ER trip. This is where our life took a dramatic turn. He told us "I've found another one." Immediately I thought "Another what? We already know we are having twins." But he meant another baby on top of the twins...WHAT? Triplets? It's amazing how excitement turns into anxiety & fear. I remember trying to tell our parents that there was another baby. They did not believe us. My husband is a practical joker and so everyone thought it was a prank. Nope...three babies. Three babies, three lives, were growing rapidly inside my stomach.

Triplet pregnancies are very risky but I had to make it that much more complicated. I had my right ovary removed when I was about 10 weeks pregnant after it became torsed & dead. Then to make it even more interesting, our boys (identical twins) started to develop twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome. Not good! I went on bedrest at home and on February 15, 2010 I went to L&D at Henrico Doctors because something wasn't right. After many tests, they sent me upstairs to stay overnight...and my water broke on baby "A". We were devestated. I was only 23 weeks pregnant and the perinatologist was not hopeful of the pregnancy making it much further. We were faced with the idea of giving birth to baby "A" at 23 weeks and try to maintain the other two babies. At 23 weeks, this baby would not likely survive and if he did, there would be severe disabilities. I'm not sure how my body decided to shut down but I spent three weeks on hospital bedrest without losing any of the babies but one Sunday night my body had had enough. I was in labor. Measuring over full-term with one child, I was maxed out. Our OBGYN had discovered at 4am that baby "A"s umbilical cord was prolapsed. It was time for them to be born...ready or not. By 4:26am, all three babies were delivered by emergency c-section while I was under general anethesia.

How could this be the best but worst day in our entire lives? We had three babies...but no one knew what would happen next and if any or all would survive.