July 2nd Public update about our twins that I posted to Facebook

 On July 2nd I posted 

"Update for those praying for our twins or following along with the situation: our last visit had bad and good news. Baby A has a previously unseen spinal scoliosis/bend and it is very severe. Her upper spine is normal but mid-to-low spine twists such that her butt is near her head. She is also growth restricted, which is normal for limb body wall babies, but potentially increases the risk of death in utero and thus the risk of death and harm for Baby B. Baby A also has had several prayers answered; they had reason to wonder about diaphragm and other organ issues but did not find any problems. They expected to find heart issues but did not find any. Those are both excellent pieces of news—that all organs appear normal and functioning helps us greatly.

That said, we don't understand the degree of growth restriction, but it is concerning to our doctor enough that we are traveling to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia for a higher level evaluation extremely shortly. Though I don't know this for sure, I suspect it is fairly extreme even for growth restriction because the intake at Philadelphia wanted to make sure we understood that, while this is just an evaluation, they may discover signs of Baby A actively failing based on some of the scans they can do. If they see signs of Baby A actively dying, they will recommend (though we are not required to go with) a selective termination of Baby A that afternoon to protect Baby B. If Baby A is actively dying and no procedure is done to cauterize the connection between the two (which kills Baby A in the process), the risks for Baby B increase to where 1 in 6 die, and of those who don't die, 30% experience anything from minor to life-altering brain and kidney damage. I pray we are not in that boat to where we need to again prayerfully consider such courses of action (our current course is not to go with the procedure), but we don't know what information we'll have until then. As a side note, we can only legally go with the procedure until the following Friday—after that, even if Baby A is dying, we just have to pray Baby B does not join her or suffer life-altering effects. As such, any decision must be made before July 14, and some circumstances could require us to make an immediate decision.
As such, please keep all of us in your prayers. Please pray that we make the decisions God would have us make, that we keep stress to a minimum, that Tella's stress has minimal negative impact on our twins inside of her and that both of our stress has minimal negative impact on our 16 month old son. Thank you so much for your time, support, and for reading this during this challenging time.
Sincerely,
Brandon"

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