Tuesday August 18

Jenny went into painful preterm labor this afternoon. She was frightened. She had driven herself to the maternity center at the hospital thinking that the docs would examine some pain and discomfort that she’d been having and say it was normal. But it wasn’t normal. It was pre-term labor.
When I got to the hospital room, Jenny was in a gown and stretched out on her side on a gurney. Her clothes were in a disorderly pile by the window, along with a stack of Science journals. Two nurses and a doctor were huddled around her and examining her belly with an ultrasound wand. The gel was silver, livid, glowing around her navel. No on was talking. Everyone was looking at the monitor. Jenny was sweating profusely.
Within a few minutes, the doctor gave me the details. “Baby A” was in distress. She wasn’t moving. She seemed pinned within the amniotic sac. “Baby B” was very active, easily detectable. The doctor was deeply concerned with the condition of Baby A.
A couple of other doctors came by and read Jenny’s chart. No one was doing much talking. When they did talk, they sort of muttered to each other self-consciously. What the hell were they saying?? I kept trying to ask politely, and then I wondered, why am I being polite? My wife is stretched out in agony here.
Jenny was tremendously upset. Lying on her back made it difficult for her to breathe; but lying on her side made the ultrasounds difficult. So it was a difficult thing to do but she stayed on her back and sort of panted. No one could see to get a good picture on the device. Lots of whispering, consulting in the shadows, more incessant insider muttering.
Finally one of the doctor’s that had been seeing Jenny gave us a choice.
Really it wasn’t much of a choice. We could continue with the pregnancy and try to minimize the labor pains. This would allow the non-distressed “Baby B” to grow fully, mature more, be more likely to live outside the womb. This would also threaten the life of “Baby A” dramatically. There was a high chance she would die, or perhaps live, but severely disabled, depending on the amount of trouble she was in, which was hard to say. It would also raise the risks to Baby B somewhat, if Baby A deteriorated further, which seemed likely.
Our other choice was to do an emergency C-section and deliver both babies, giving both of them a good chance of living. A second doctor said that babies born at 27 weeks, which was our case, had a 90% survival rate. That seemed good to me. The doctors gave us an hour to make our decision.
We didn’t debate long. Really it didn’t seem like much of a decsion. We were in easy accord. Of course we’d deliver them; Baby B, essentially, would be making a sacrifice to save the life of Baby A. We sat and talked, and when the docs came back, we informed them of our decision. Jenny was immediately schedule for her C-section, for three hours later.
Some time in that spell of time, we called a few people, held each other, and worked out the names for the twins. It was a set of names we’d been discussing but had yet to settle on until that moment. The smaller child would be Luna Dorothy Sanders. The larger girl would be Estella Faye Sanders (Stella).