Her joy turned to shock, then panic.
How could she possibly carry, let alone care for, six babies?
Sheburst into tears as her husband, Michael, in disbelief, counted theembryos once again.
“One more seemed fine.
We were excited.”
As she lay down on the table, she joked with the technician.
“I’mhaving triplets!”
“Just don’t tell me I’m having any more!”
“All I couldthink was that I couldn’t do that to my daughter,” Kristina recalls.
“What kind of life would she have?
I knew we wouldn’t beable to handle it.”
But it wasn’t that simple toKristina.
“Abortion was never an option,” she says.
“If I accidentally gotpregnant, that was it.
“Now this is what I got, but I didn’t want it.It seemed so hypocritical.
I was devastated.”
“Partof our job is to help women deliver healthy babies.
And sometimes thatmeans offering a reduction.”
Carrying multiples, even twins, can be a dangerous proposition.
(There are no stats on higher numbers of multiples because they are sorare.)
(For triplets, thechances are at least 40 percent.)
For any baby, the biggest complication comes from pretermdelivery, considered to be anything before 37 weeks.
Women pregnant withone baby deliver at 39 weeks, on average.
Some newborns, especially those arriving before24 weeks, never make it home.
Many of the restsometimes severalmultiples in one familyleave with lifelong ailments.
“All we know is that the hazards are pretty high when you’retalking about multiples.
For a lot of people, they’re too high.”
They now utilize the same technology to reducemultiple fetusesbut not without controversy.
Women facing the prospectoften hide it from loved ones, instead sharing their anxieties viaInternet support groups.
In theend, she decided the risks of having triplets outweighed her guilt overthe reduction.
But it was a lonely process.
“My parents have picketed atabortion clinics,” Jill says.
“They’d never understand.
To this day,only my husband and my doctor know what I went through.
I feltcompletely alone.”
Doctors who perform the procedure are wary of discussing it.
“Do we want autopian society, where every pregnancy is exactly what you want, with nocomplications?
Life’s not like that.
If you want that, don’t getpregnant.”
Now, Dr. Timorsays, he generally does about 60 per year.
Needless to say, success ratesfor IVF have gone up.
“Adding embryosdoesn’t boost the odds of conceiving, just the odds of havingmultiples.”
“I’d heard there was a chance, but I never imagined I’d end upwith six.
I mean, who does?”
Soon after Meghanturned 2, the couple spent a year unsuccessfully trying to conceive ontheir own.
And after the first roundof treatment failed, Kristina was sure she’d be lucky to conceive.
“So I wasn’t worried.
Ten days after her second IUI,Kristina took apregnancy test.
“It was positive,” she recalls.
I was sothrilled I never stopped to think about how many babies it might be.”
“You never know which group you’ll be in,” Dr.Sehdev says.
“Just because one couple had problems or didn’t, doesn’tmean another couple will or won’t.”
Some patients come in recalling TVcelebrations of high-order multiples soon after their birthswhichmakes doctors cringe.
“Couples ask why they can’t be like the family onTV,” Dr. Sehdev says.
“But these shows never focus on outcomes for thebabies.
They never talk about the ones who won’t survive or who willhave neurological issues for life.”
Still, there are women whose remorse after reduction is not easilyforgotten.
Now, with a 6-year-old, 3-year-oldtwins and a 1-year-old, she says she regrets her decision to reduce.
“A lot of people who goforward don’t have negative outcomes.
I’d never do it again.”
But Kristina never considered it: “I told my doctor I didn’tneed to think about it.
We knew we’d keep three if that happened.
Adecision had been made.”
Everything changed when she found out she was carrying six.
Shecarried the image in her mind for weeks as she struggled with what todo.
But in her heart, Kristina felt it was wrong, a betrayal of herbeliefs and her babies.
At those moments, she’d think that she, too, couldhandle it.
“I never let anything hold me back,” she says.
“Why should Ilet this?”
But the success stories were few and far between.
All of it addedto her torment.
She’d waited so long to be pregnant, but now shecouldn’t enjoy one minute of it.
She didn’t bond with the babies,knowing some wouldn’t make it.
Instead, she tried not to think about thesix babies developing inside herexcept to pray that some wouldspontaneously reduce.
“This way, I felthopeless.
I didn’t want to be making this choice.
It was horrible.”
Every ultrasound showedthat her babies were still alive; every week that passed felt liketorture.
They couldn’tpossibly all be healthy.
And she couldn’t possibly care for them.
“I wasin denial the whole time,” Kristina says.
This was bad, butthat was something I couldn’t face.”
Even now,Kristina hoped that one or more of the hearts would have stopped on itsown.
He put his empty hand on Kristina’s belly and poised the 3-inchneedle over her.
Then he studied the ultrasound monitor, which served asa guide to where to insert the tip.
Kristina’s doctor took only a few moments to locate the first embryohe planned to reduce.
But as he touched the needle to her skin, shesuddenly started sobbing.
Her uterus tightened, preventing the needlefrom going through.
“I was freaking out, still questioning if we shoulddo it,” she recalls.
“It’s not that it hurt so much.
I was just at mywit’s end by that point.”
After a few minutes, Kristina calmed downenough for the doctor to insert the needle.
By the time he’d removed theneedle, Kristina was sobbing again.
And again her uterus became so tensehe wasn’t able to continue.
But it hadn’t.
Somehow, the fetus had survived theinjection, a rare anomaly.
Michael, who was facing the monitor, gasped.For Kristina, the news was too much.
She leaped off the table,inconsolable.
she shouted, in hysterics.
“I can’t do this!
It’s not meantto be!”
But when she woke upthe next day, nothing had changed.
She felt a reduction was her onlyoption, regardless of how excruciating.
So again, theydrove to the doctor’s office, and she lay on the table.
In total, the procedure took 20 minutes.
When the technicianchecked, all three hearts had stopped.
“I couldn’t look at them,“Kristina says.
“And I couldn’t look at the other three, either.
I wassad but relieved that it was behind me.”
Still, Kristina couldn’t completely relax yet.
The fear of losing everything meant Kristina wouldn’tlet herself truly connect with the three small lives growing inside her.
That baby, Nathan, was almost 2 pounds; siblings Evan andMakena each weighed more than 3 pounds.
Three years later, Kristina still wonders what could have been.
Shenever knew if her other babies were girls or boys, never had the chanceto name them.
“But seeing how sick Nathan was made me realize how tough itcould be.
I have no regrets.”
Photo Credit: John Lin
