A Father's Tears

 On May 22nd I posted: "We received good news and bad news at our appointment today. Baby B is healthy and shows no complications. Baby A appears to have Limb body wall complex, which our doctor indicated is terminal. Upon some further research, there seem to be some extremely rare cases where a baby survives it, but they are essentially anecdotal in frequency. There is a strong potential that we will have to make some very hard decisions later on as one identical twin doing poorly or dying in utero can have a heavy effect on the other. There is a rather awful-to-consider but sometimes necessary procedure where they cauterize one umbilical cord to starve and kill the one doing poorly to save the other lest both die. There are also questions about whether hospice for a baby who will be suffering for up to 36 hours before dying is the most merciful choice. There is also an astronomically tiny grain of hope for two live girls who make it. Either way, we will be the best parents...

 On May 9 I made the first post about our girls to Facebook.  It read: "So Tella and I are expecting identical twin girls in November. There may be a complication with one of them though that would be very serious if it is present (they can't tell yet), so please keep us in your prayers. Hopefully the complication is not present." Though I may fill the details in later, our initial diagnosis was on April 16th for something called a cystic hygroma, which has a 10% survival rate.  We were extremely concerned, and many people prayed.  It either resolved itself or never existed.  About two weeks later, we were told we had no cystic hygroma, but we may have ectopia cardis and an omphalocele, which also had a 10% survival rate.  That's what this post would have been about.