July 20, 2007

• Today

  Today my sister in law Jamie goes in to the hospital to have the 32 week
  old twins by c-section. They are monoamniotic twins so they need to take them
  now at 32 weeks. Please pray that everything will go good and that the baby
  girls will both do really really well. Thank you.
  
  Monoamniotic twins?
  This means that both
  babies share the same living space. They don’t just share their house,
  they share a bedroom, bathroom, and playroom. While it is still
  possible even for a singleton to become tangled in his or her own cord,
  monoamniotic twins have to worry about becoming tangled in their
  sibling’s cord, too. Cord entanglement (also called “Cord Accidents”)
  are the number one risk in this type of pregnancy. 
  

   

  While
  some cord accidents are sudden, it appears that the majority of fatal
  cord accidents are gradual.  And the majority of those will show
  symptoms that can be detected via high resolution ultrasound and/or
  fetal monitoring (
  I.e. Non Stress Tests or NST’s).  That means if you are watching often
  enough, you will probably see the signs of compression in enough time
  to do an emergency delivery before it is too late.  So as you can see,
  the key to management of a monoamniotic pregnancy is monitoring

   

  Mono-amniotic twins are rare, occurring in approximately 1 in 35,000 to 1 in 60,000 pregnancies. Unfortunately,
  monoamniotic twins are at great risk for health complications due to
  the close proximity of the two umbilical cords in the amniotic sac.
  This makes it particularly easy for the twins to become entangled in
  each other’s cords, or to compress one another’s cords, endangering
  their oxygen and food supply. The survival rate for mono-amniotic twins
  is approximately 50%
  .

  • 6:53 am
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