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    With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance: The Early Arrival of Our Twins, Marlee Faith and Samuel Chance Marcus
    With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance: The Early Arrival of Our Twins, Marlee Faith and Samuel Chance Marcus
    With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance: The Early Arrival of Our Twins, Marlee Faith and Samuel Chance Marcus
    Ebook118 pages1 hour

    With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance: The Early Arrival of Our Twins, Marlee Faith and Samuel Chance Marcus

    By Brian Marcus

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    About this ebook

    Our twins arrived at 24 weeks, four months too soon. Marlee was born at 11⁄4 lbs., and Sam, the bruiser, at 11⁄2 lbs. What followed was 316 days in the intensive care unit, multiple surgeries and some very long nights, but always the steadfast belief that one day we would take our babies home with us. And in truth, aside from the obvious of having our babies, our time in the hospital gave more than it took. Sam and Marlee taught me that tremendous strength, courage and perseverance can be found in the smallest of things.

    I started writing on the day the twins were born, as an easy way to keep people informed. But over time, it grew into so much more for me. It became an outlet for my hope and fear. And as we heard from dear friends and family, and friends of friends we hadn’t met, it gave us strength to know there were so many out there pulling for little Marlee and Sam. Hopefully, “With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance” can give some strength and hope to parents going through this now.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrian Marcus
    Release dateDec 24, 2014
    ISBN9780986327711
    With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance: The Early Arrival of Our Twins, Marlee Faith and Samuel Chance Marcus

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      Book preview

      With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance - Brian Marcus

      With a Little Faith, We Had a Chance

      Copyright © 2014 Brian Marcus

      Smashwords Edition

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever including Internet usage, without written permission of the author.

      To see more about Marlee and Sam, or to leave a comment, please visit www.marleeandsam.com.

      eBook design by Maureen Cutajar

      www.gopublished.com

      ISBN: 978-0-9863277-1-1

      To Marlee, Sam, Maria and Jackson

      Contents

      Off to the Hospital We Go

      Two Weeks

      The Birth

      How They’re Doing Now

      November 2010

      December 2010

      January 2011

      February 2011

      March 2011

      April 2011

      May 2011

      June 2011

      July 2011

      August 2011

      September 2011

      Special Thanks

      Off to the Hospital We Go

      ON A COOL NIGHT in October just before Halloween, my wife Maria (like the operatic aria, with an M at front) and I had just finished dinner when she started to complain of pains which felt like contractions. Couldn’t be, we thought, as the twins were not due to arrive for another four months. However, off we drove to the pediatric ER at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco. This was around 8:30 pm. Our friend Carol came over to watch our 3-year old son Jackson.

      After an hour or so, the on-call perinatal doctor examined Maria and confirmed the worst. She was fully dilated and the twins had moved to the birth canal. They were coming, but at 22 weeks, they had no chance. I held Maria and whispered for the first time, a little faith, though at that point I had absolutely no idea what that meant.

      I’d had a pretty easy time of it up to that point – happy childhood in a loving family, ambled through undergrad and grad schools, traveled and met an amazing woman who, for a yet-discernible reason, agreed to be my wife. We had Jackson a few years into the marriage. And when we learned we were pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl, I thought our little family unit was on its way.

      After an hour or so in the hospital that night in October, a perinatal specialist, Dr. Michael Katz, examined Maria and explained our options: 1) do nothing, and the twins would deliver stillborn at some point shortly; 2) purposefully terminate the pregnancy and we could try again; or 3) operate in an attempt to move the twins back into their womb without breaking the amniotic sacs, and attempt to put a circlage stitch in Maria’s cervix to keep them in there. He explained that there was almost no cervix to work with and that this option would be difficult at best. Not great options, but we were going to do all that we could for the babies so he proceeded to operate.

      My brother Jono came down to the hospital and we sat together, thinking and talking about things I never wanted to think or talk about. After a two hour surgery, Dr. Katz came out and explained that the procedure went well, but that he had very little hope. He said it was analogous to putting a stich in soggy bread and he didn’t believe the stitch he put in would hold. He also said that with the cervix no longer sealed, the danger of infection was very high (which would terminate the pregnancies and was also a risk to Maria). The absolute bare minimum we needed to get to for the twins to have a chance was 24 weeks (two weeks away). Maria was still having contractions, and he told us that if they didn’t stop, he didn’t think the pregnancy would last the night.

      Maria did in fact continue to have contractions throughout the night. They had been giving her Terbutaline in an attempt to stop the contractions, but it hadn’t been working. However, around 6am, they tried a new drug, Indomethacin, that appeared to work. The contractions stopped.

      Maria was put on strict bed-rest, staying in bed 24/7, on a slant with her head down to reduce pressure on the womb to try and keep the little ones in there. She was going to have to stay like that until the twins came. We were told we needed at least two weeks for the twins to have any real shot, but that two months in that position would be better.

      Two Weeks

      JACKSON AND I KEPT Maria company as she lay there, but those were long days. After about a week, the first sac had ruptured. One doctor explained an option that we could terminate that baby and it would probably improve the chances for the other baby. An absurd decision to have to make, but they were both in there fighting and we just weren’t going to give up on either of them. A few days later, the second sac ruptured making the decision moot. They believed that one of the babies was causing bleeding and a variety of other problems for Maria. It appeared it was the boy, but turns out in the end it was the girl (she was already causing problems and framing

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