A CHANCE TOLive

Article Provided by Sanford

28 days is a little over four months. And while it may not seem like a very long time, it felt almost endless to Mindy and her husband. Because for four months, they spent every day at the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Sanford Health in Fargo watching their twin girls develop and grow.

“A lot of their firsts were in the NICU,” said Mindy. “Their first smiles and all those first little noises they make, they all happened there.”

An unexpected shock

Mindy and her family live in Fargo, just a mere 20 minutes away from the Sanford Children’s Hospital. But when Mindy went in for an ultrasound, she had no idea she would be spending so much of her time there.

“One of the babies was measuring a lot smaller than the other,” remembered Mindy. “I was 23 weeks pregnant, but baby B was only measuring at about 19 weeks.”

Mindy was pregnant with dichorionic, or fraternal, twins. The babies were developing in two separate gestational sacs, receiving blood and nutrients from different placentas. Seeing that baby B was so far behind, Mindy’s OB/GYN, Jon Dangerfield, MD, recommended she see Sanford physician Peter Van Eerden, MD, the only maternal fetal medicine specialist and high-risk obstetrician in North Dakota.

“Baby A was growing on track, but baby B wasn’t receiving proper blood flow,” said Dr. Van Eerden. “Mindy had preeclampsia, causing her blood vessels to constrict, limiting the flow of blood both she and her babies were receiving. The only treatment for preeclampsia is delivery.”

Buying time

Delivering Mindy right then was the safest option for her. The longer she waited, the higher her risk became for stroke and other complications. However, the chances both babies would survive were extremely slim.

“I was an absolute wreck,” recalled Mindy. “To be told you will lose a child, possibly two … What do you do?”

The team at Sanford, along with Mindy and her husband, decided to hold off on delivery as long as it was safe for Mindy in order to buy the babies a little more time.

“Every day, every minute spent in utero counts for babies,” stated Dr. Van Eerden. “We kept her in the hospital with frequent monitoring for an extra five days, which tremendously helped the condition of baby B.”

“Dr. Van Eerden was really happy when he saw the baby’s progress,” said Mindy. “When we had first gone in, he knew she wouldn’t have made it. But we decided it was time to deliver as my condition was starting to deteriorate.”

Close to home

Ava and Kinley were born via cesarean birth and taken immediately into the NICU. Kinley weighed 1 pound 4 ounces while her sister Ava was only 12 ounces, making her one of the smallest babies ever born in Fargo. The first few days were nerve wracking with Mindy and her husband wondering if both the girls would survive or develop any severe disabilities or health issues due to their premature size.

“You just wonder, what is going to happen to them,” said Mindy. “What kind of life are they going to have? It was very stressful and scary for my husband and I.”

The girls received around-the-clock care from the specially trained nurses and staff in the