ANKENY, Iowa — She walked into an Iowa clinic complaining of stomach pains, but what was causing the pains nearly gave her a heart attack.
“I had really sharp pain in my left side and went into the doctor, and they said we think you might be pregnant,” new mom Shelby Magnani told WHOTV.com. “They told me I was six months and told me to get down to the ER. They did an ultrasound and told me it was twins.”
Not just any set of twins, but monoamniotic twins. That means the twins shared one placenta and one amniotic sac.
“About one to two percent of all pregnancies are twins, but even rarer than that is monoamniotic twins,” Dr. Jennifer Krupp with Perinatal Center of Iowa said.
Dr. Krupp said monoamniotic twins present their own set of challenges.
“The entanglement of the cords is what we worry about,” she said. “We bring the patients into the hospital at 24 to 26 weeks, so we can monitor the babies several times a day, because we know the risk of one or both of those babies dying is fairly significant.”
Surprise twins Ava and Anna were delivered by C-section last week. One weighed four pounds, the other three pounds.
Surprise twins Ava and Anna were delivered by C-section last week.
“They’re both just little miracles, it could have been so many things that went wrong that didn’t,” Magnani said.
“I love them, I love them more than anything,” father James Croskey said.
The girls will spend several weeks in the NICU, but are expected to be just fine.
