When my pregnancy test came up positive at just three weeks, I attributed the early result—and feeling differently than my first two pregnancies—to expecting a girl. After two boys, we wanted a girl. When I saw the doctor at eight weeks, we learned we were having twins. But we couldn’t fully process that, because an ultrasound showed that Baby B, our daughter, was really small—at risk, the doctor said, of becoming a “vanishing twin.”
We were lucky: Twelve weeks in and Baby B was still there. She was still there at 16 weeks, and at 20. But after that ultrasound, when the doctor called us in, I knew something was wrong. Baby B, she said, was “dangerously small.”
Our doctor referred us to the OB/GYN team at Penn State Milton S. Hershey Medical Center. For the next five weeks, I trekked to Hershey; then, at 25 weeks, the team confirmed she was in distress and presented us with the options: Deliver then, which could potentially save Baby B but put Baby A—our healthy son—at risk. Or, allow the pregnancy to continue and risk Baby B dying in utero.
The doctors’ goal to get me to 36 weeks meant potentially staying at the hospital for the next 11 weeks, away from my husband, our two kids, and my job. For the next four weeks, the doctors monitored me every day. They gave me steroids to help develop the babies’ lungs. The doctors and attending physicians knew it was important for me to be home for my oldest child’s first day of kindergarten and my youngest’s third birthday, and they made sure I was. But at 31 weeks, they said it was time: They would be delivering the babies at the end of the week.
There were 22 people in the delivery room for my scheduled C-section; each baby had a four- to five-person NICU team waiting for them. Baby A, our son Roman, came out first, weighing 3 pounds, 13 ounces. Our daughter, Malia—Baby B—came out three minutes later, weighing 2 pounds, 3 ounces, the size of a cellphone. Both were put on ventilators and rushed to the NICU. Roman came home in four weeks, but Malia struggled to breathe or eat on her own. At one point, they had to give her a blood transfusion.
On NICU forums, I learned that most premature babies leave the hospital around their due dates. The twins’ was Nov. 15. Finally, on Dec. 19, they told us Malia was ready to come home.
I am so grateful for the entire team at Hershey—the doctors, the nurses, the NICU staff—for their expert care, and for seeing me as a human. I had total trust in their abilities to deliver my twins. They recently celebrated their first birthday, and they’re thriving. —as told to Savita Iyer
Chiluvya Zulu '17 Lib and her husband, Ben Gummo ’09 H&HD, ’11 MEd Edu, live in State College with their four children.
