WATCH: An Iowa woman got the surprise of a lifetime when she visited the doctor with what she thought was a stomach ailment. As it turns out, she was six months pregnant with twins who were at a high-risk of not surviving. Stephanie Moore reports.
TORONTO – An unsuspecting Iowa woman walked into a clinic nearly three months ago with stomach pains – only to find out she was six months pregnant with high-risk twins.
That was probably the last thing Shelby Magnani expected to hear.
“I had really sharp pain in my left side and went into the doctor, and they said we think you might be pregnant. 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,” Magnani told NBC.
On top of that, Magnani delivered the bundles of joy via c-section just hours later.
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“It’s pretty nuts, still sinking in,” said James Croskey, Magnani’s fiancé and father of the twins.
If this sounds like a scene from the TLC series, I Didn’t Know I Was Pregnant, you’re not mistaken. And just like sometimes on the show, there was a twist that wasn’t good.
The pregnancy wasn’t the only surprise – the twins were monoamniotic and faced a life or death scenario.
“About one to two per cent of all pregnancies are twins, but even rarer than that is monoamniotic twins. They have one placenta and one amniotic sac and both of those twins share the placenta as well as the sac,” said Obstetrician Dr. Jennifer Krupp.
Monoamniotic babies face a 50 per cent survival rate.
“The entanglement of the cords is what we worry about, so we bring the patients into the hospital at 24 – 26 weeks, so we can monitor the babies several times a day,” added Krupp. “Because we know the risk of one or both of those babies dying is fairly significant.”
The twins – named Anna and Ava – weighed four and three pounds each and are doing just fine so far.
“They’re both just little miracles, they’re so cute, it could have been so many things that went wrong that didn’t,” added Magnani.
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