This story is featured in the Spring Issue of Mulitplicity Magazine.

Written by Julie McCaffrey.

“I will never forget our excitement on the day we headed to my ultrasound when I was 19 weeks pregnant with fraternal twins. I will also never forget the sound in the tech’s voice when she said “she couldn’t find something” and left to get the doctor, the looks on the doctor’s faces, the silent comfort from my husband and the feeling I had just been run over by a bus. I left that day with my first of what would turn out to be many lessons on Congenital Heart Disease (CHD), as this was the day that Baby A was diagnosed with Double Outlet Right Ventrical (DORV) with transposition and a large ventricular septal defect (VSD).

I went home that day, gave our 1 year old son a much too big hug and began to research. By the time I was 26 weeks I was at peace with the news and was used to our weekly doctor’s visits. That was until our beloved doctor looked at me and said “Mrs. McCaffrey, I don’t know how to tell you this, but…” and I didn’t hear much else after that. Baby B was not fine, she too had a congenital heart defect and now I felt like that bus had just run me over and then backed up to do it again. In the U.S., one out of 100 babies is born with CHD and I was just told that for some unknown reasons, both my babies had this disease.

By the time I was 36 weeks pregnant, I was more than prepared in all the areas I could control. I knew every possible scenario for what my children were about to face and felt I had done everything possible to prepare our home. I stocked up at Costco, cleaned and organized our house, prepared the nursery and wrote a 12-page guide for taking care of our older son. At 36 weeks, my water broke and while my sister-in-law raced to our house, I was thinking about how scared I was there was a scenario I hadn’t thought of. Both twins were delivered vaginally less than 8 hours later and the thing I remember most is an immense feeling of loss when they whisked my children away without as much as a hand to their cheek. More