In all honesty, I was a little hesitant to write my story for the Fetal Hope Foundation because it did not have a happy ending.  But after much thought, I realized that my story could help others cope with a loss and possibly provide some kind of hope.  Because I am human and dealing with the raw emotions of losing children, I had to really put a filter on my thoughts.  I had to weed out the anger and resentment in order to expose the hope that I have found today.  Instead of going into all of the details about my pregnancy, I will paraphrase my story in order to reveal More ...

We recently sat down to talk with Dr. Courtney Stephenson, DO, FACOG, one of Fetal Hope’s newest additions to the Medical Advisory Board and Director of the recently opened Charlotte Fetal Care Center in Charlotte, NC, to learn more about her journey and inspiration behind treating fetal syndromes like TTTS.
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When my fiancé and I went in for our routine 20 week ultrasound, we were ecstatic to find out the sex of our beautiful bundle of joy. Being so naïve at the time, my biggest fear was that the baby wouldn’t be positioned in the technician’s favor and we wouldn’t be able to find out the gender.More ...

“The most amazing experience in life is to be a parent and one can only truly sense it by becoming one. The first time you lay your eyes on your child you know deep down inside that your life as you know it will revolve around him or her.”

The above text is a lose quote from my father and being a son I always wanted a child of my own, not to revolve around him but to experience life along side with him or her.More ...

We learned at about 7.5 weeks that we were pregnant with twins, but that they (doctors) did not see a membrane separating the two babies.  Having had two very easy singleton pregnancies before, I had no idea that two babies could even be in the same sack.  We were referred to a specialist and were told that we should wait at least 12 weeks to allow for a membrane to present itself.  So we went for weekly ultrasound appointments and were lucky enough to see a separating membrane at 9 weeks gestation.  This was a good sign.  However, we quickly learned that the baMore ...

Our first child, Veronica, was born in 2006 in Charlotte, NC.  We loved being a family, and a year later decided we wanted another child.  After a couple months of trying to conceive our second child, we were excited to receive a positive pregnancy result on our home pregnancy test.  A couple of days later we went into our OBGYN and they confirmed the pregnancy.  We fully expected this pregnancy to be as straight forward as our first.  Boy, were we wrong!  At our 8 week check-up, our OBGYN nurse was able to hear a heartbeat!  She told us about a new NT (nuchal tMore ...

May 10, 2008…that was the day we found out we were having twins.  One would expect the doctor to share the news by using an excited tone “WOW….there are two”.  But instead, the conversation went more like, “oh there are two, don’t go online and look up twin complications”.  We were confused.  The doctor shared she was worried that there was no sac separating the girls.More ...

Cinderella, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty – the list goes on and on. We have all read most of the more popular fairy tales.  Some of us have them memorized after having read them a thousand times.  Well, we were living the fairytale until we were introduced to something we had never heard of before, Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome or TTTS.  Our story is not a typical fairy tale.  It is one that has a great deal of heart ache and a great deal of sadness, but it is one that proves love, faith and family can get you through just about anything.More ...

Within that past couple of years my husband and I have experienced four miscarriages.  The loss of a child, no matter at what stage, is heartbreaking.  Doctors told us after each miscarriage that there is nothing wrong with us, we are still young and that we will go on to have healthy children.  In July 2008 we learned that we were once again expecting.  We were very excited, but also a bit nervous.  On September 2, 2008 we had our first appointment with our doctor.  Our pregnancy was confirmed and we even heard a heartbeat.  What a precious sound that was.  We More ...