During the summer of 2000 I found out that I had high blood pressure and decided I wanted to treat it without medication. One way was to stop taking birth control pills. My doctor told me that the last thing I should do is get pregnant. I wasn't too concerned about that happening because it had taken two years of fertility medication to conceive my last child.
Three months later I was pregnant with twins. At 20 weeks I was put on bedrest and the ultrasound showed that twin B had something wrong with her heart. At 28 weeks I failed my gestational diabetes test and had a mild stroke due to the blood that was drawn.
At 35 weeks I had to go to a hospital three hours away to have a test done because twin B's right valve was not working. The next day my water broke and the girls were born by c-section.
Both girls were flown to Children's Hospital because Amber was so small and Crystal was fighting for her life due to her right heart valve not working. The girls spent three weeks in NICU and both had to have surgery. Amber had to have her esophagus repaired and Crystal had to have a balloon inserted to open her heart valve.
We brought both girls home on July 4th. Crystal had to have her heart monitored monthly. An ultrasound was done to see how the valve was doing. The cardiologist said it looked like she would eventually have to have the valve replace, but if we could get her to adulthood she would just need one operation.
Each month she looked like she could make it to the next. After the ultrasound on December 10th, the cardiologist spoke to us. He said Crystal's heart looked normal and that the valve functioned like any other healthy person's should. He attributed it to the heart healing itself after a trauma. We attributed it to prayer.
Today the girls are small but healthy. Unless you know me you can't tell that I ever had a stroke and medication has kept my blood pressure down.
