WARNING: some symptoms for twin mums

[Camka]

Hello to all pregnant women with twins!

As it just happened to us, I would like to inform all of you about a severe disease that can affect one kind of twins.

It is important to know if you are expecting monochorial twins or not (it means that both twins are sharing the same placenta). If you are in that case, please carefully check and inform your gyn if you are having one of the following symptoms:
- fast growing tummy, tensed
- fast gaining weight
- oedemia at hands and/or feet

These symptoms could be the alert for a so-called TTTS: Twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome.

That means that one of the twin is getting a lot of liquid, food, blood, while the other one is almost not having any.

There are a few treatments that can be done to help and save the twins but if nothing is done in time, that will lead to the death of most probably both babies.

I had read about the syndrome in a book, but nobody never really informed me about what it was and what to be carefull at, neither my gyn, nor the specialist who did the morphology scan!!!
It is however something quite frequent in monochorial twin pregnancy, and I think it is important that mother-to-be are informed about it.

We have had a laser surgery last week, and we are now hoping that both twins will recover.... There is a lot of hope with this disease, but you must be aware of it and react quickly.

I hope this information can be usefull to some of you and will be happy to answer your questions. I am no specialist, but can give you some website also....

Take care!

[MommyTo3]

Hope all continues to go well. This is quite common in momo-twins (but momo twins in general are not so common in the world of twins). Doctors will watch you like a hawk when you're expecting momo-twins and they're often delivered early.

A very helpful website is: Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome Foundation Home Page

Also a great source of information (on twins in general) is Twinstuff.com.