Cannon Triplets

TLDR: We had triplets!

It was a difficult pregnancy, it was a difficult birth, it is a difficult time in the hospital for Cassidy, and it IS difficult at 3 am trying to feed Reagan and Sabrina at home.

Please, please, please help us hire a nighttime nurse to help with the 3 am feedings. If we're well-rested, we're not only happier, kinder people, but we're also able to spend more time with Cassandra at the hospital NICU.

…

And here’s the long story. Fair warning, I do have a bit of a dark sense of humor, and I am long-winded.

It was Valentine's day when our pregnancy test came up positive for a second time.

What a lovely omen.

My first pregnancy with Madeline was relatively easy - but this pregnancy was nothing like my first. I camped out on the couch napping and struggled with morning sickness that lasted all day.

Maybe... I was having a boy?

Then we got a phone call. My early second-trimester screening indicated a neural tube defect, like spinal bifida. I needed to come in right away to get an ultrasound. We spent the night researching and praying, so while I didn't know what we would face, I felt we were prepared to handle it.

When I walked into the doctor’s office the next day, and the doctor saw the size of my belly, she immediately said, "I don’t think this is a neural tube defect. You're either wrong about how far along you are, or there is more than one baby in there!"

She was right!

There wasn’t one baby in there. There were three! And girls. All of them.

I was going to be the mother of four girls.

I laughed. And couldn't stop laughing for a few minutes.

I'm one of five girls, my mom is one of five girls, her mom is one of five girls. It's like God was trying to get me as close to five girls as possible.

But there was a twist; two of the babies were identical and they shared a placenta and an amniotic sac. This is extremely rare and risky. Their umbilical cords can get tangled up together at any point, and sharing a placenta meant that they were sharing the nutrients and blood that I was providing them. And for them, it wasn’t an even split. One of the babies was getting too much blood, the other, not enough.

All of this came in a whirlwind of information.

The doctors took us straight from the ultrasound room to a conference room and told us our babies wouldn’t make it. Not probably wouldn't make it - but that they wouldn't. And if any one of the babies died it would set off a chain reaction that would cause early labor and I would deliver the other two. They were so young that they most likely wouldn't survive, and, if any of them did survive, they would most likely have severe developmental issues. We were told that one of the babies, the smallest, was already struggling to live.

We were given options.

First option, we could do nothing. The doctors assured us that this was the most certain way to lose all three. We needed intervention.

Second option, we could “reduce” the struggling baby and give the other two a greater chance of survival.

Or, third, we could try for fetal ablation surgery, it would separate the blood flow in the placenta for the identical babies so if one baby died, it wouldn't start the chain reaction for the other babies. It would also allow the smaller baby a chance to grow on her own without having to share blood flow with her sister. One big catch: it might not even be possible. Our doctor knew of one surgeon who might chance it, but we were warned that he might think it wasn't doable.

If this was a medical drama this is the part where you cue House, Dr. Addison Montgomery, or Doogie Howser.

We asked what the chances were for all the babies to survive and our doctor simply shook her head.

We had to ask ourselves, could we let one of our babies go so the other two could live?

My mother-in-law watched Madeline as Robert and I made life and death decisions for our babies. In medical dramas and hypothetical ethics questions, you are given the option to abort one baby so that the mother or another baby could survive. But this wasn't a medical drama. This was real life. Who really expects to make these decisions?

What could we do? Aborting one baby would mean that the survivors could grow like healthy twins with manageable pregnancy complications. Doing nothing would likely result in at least one baby dying before I could give birth and the survivors would likely have developmental issues. And surgery might not even be on the table.

I went into research mode, reading research papers and contacting medical experts. Robert had philosophical discussions with friends, family and spiritual leaders.

We prayed.

We asked to see the specialty fetal surgeon. He agreed to try, and I had fetal surgery the next day. 18 weeks pregnant. One week exactly after discovering I had three babies, thirty fingers and thirty toes inside of me.

After surgery he told me the babies were separated, they had a chance! But looking into his eyes, I knew he didn’t think our little baby would survive, yet he still wanted me to have hope.

She survived the night, and when the doctor came by the recovery room the next day, he admitted that he hadn’t thought she’d make it through the night. She survived the next night, too. And the next. Hope was a challenge for us throughout the pregnancy. Every week we saw the high-risk doctors for an ultrasound. And every week, they vacillated between cautiously optimistic to gently preparing us to say goodbye to our little baby.

It felt very much like The Princess Bride. “Good night, Westly. Good work. Sleep well. I’ll most likely kill you in the morning.”

But that didn’t happen. Ten weeks and about a million complications later, the babies were born. 3 months early, after a very long and painful labor of 58 hours, we finally had our girls. Cassandra “Cassidy” Adams - 1 lb 2 oz, 510 grams. Reagan Aurora – 2 lbs 14 oz and Sabrina Max – 2 lbs 11 oz. Reagan was positioned to be born first but Cassidy threw her leg out and insisted she come out before anyone else. She broke her leg in the process.

At first they were too small and too fragile to breathe on their own. To eat. To be held. Reagan and Sabrina got stronger day by day. They moved from relying on oxygen to breathing freely. And their preemie grunts and squeaks became newborn cries and squalls. They came home 2 months after being born.

Robert held their hands that first day. I was able to hold them each in my arms a few days later. And a month later, we were able to hold Reagan and Sabrina together.

Cassidy, however, has been struggling. She swallowed blood during labor, and it made her sick. They gave her a few blood transfusions and her stomach got better, but then her lungs declined. And then they declined further. She struggled to breathe and the doctors put her on a ventilator.

Once again, our doctors vacillated between cautiously optimistic and gently preparing us to say goodbye.

The doctors have been preparing us for her death since we discovered she existed, but she's here. She’s getting better, and she’s defying expectations. A few steps forward, a step back, a step forward, two steps back. It’s kinda a cha cha! And we have faith that she’s going to make it home.

We hope by Christmas.

And then... we’ll have three babies at home! Three! Well, with a three-year-old daughter, its more like four.

This has been a challenging time for us. Spiritually and emotionally. We've had to prepare for our babies to die and then accept hope as they've reached milestones, only to repeat the process again and again.

We've needed support, and we've gotten it. Friends and family have reached out to us and to their support groups to offer their prayers and positive thoughts, and we've felt it. Knowing there are people out there who are thinking of our little girls and urging them to get strong has been a source of comfort for us.

Now that two of them are home with us, we need another support source: sleep! Robert and I have been heavily leaning on friends and family to help care for these little ones during the day, and it’s been an enormous help. We’ve been able to visit Cassandra and give Madeline some one-on-one time. But like any parents of newborns, we're struggling at night. And our struggles are compounded by having two babies at home and still having to spend significant time at the hospital for our third triplet. We worry about being able to do this long-term without burning everyone out.

For that, we ask for your help. We really cannot ask our friends to come over at 3 AM to feed our babies. We would love to hire a night nurse once a week, so we can continue to visit Cassandra and face these daily challenges.

If you have recommendations for a good night nurse, please send them our way.

If you can contribute to our night nurse fund, you will have our heartfelt thanks.

If you could send your thoughts, prayers, and positive vibes, we will feel your support.

And honestly, we could probably handle some diapers because...triplets!

Thank you for being there for us. This has been a rocky journey, but we’ve felt our friends and family doing their best to support us every step of the way. It's not often in life that you so viscerally feel the love and support of your family and friends, but we have.

Please share our story with anyone who needs to believe that in these one-in-a-million scenarios, miracles do exist.

Thank you.

The Cannon Family

Robert, Joannah, Madeline, Cassandra, Reagan and Sabrina