Woman's Stomach Pains Are Actually Labor...With Twins

Magnani, Croskey, and twins Anna and Ava. Photo courtesy of Magnani.

Getting surprised at the hospital is rarely a good thing, but a woman in Ankeny, Iowa got the shock of a lifetime (times two) when she delivered identical twin girls earlier this month. Shelby Magnani, 23, had no idea she was expecting when she went to the doctor for sharp pains in her lower left abdomen. It turns out Magnani’s ailments were anything but a routine stomach issue—she was 34 weeks pregnant. “They did an ultrasound and told me it was twins,” Magnani told Iowa’s Channel 13 News. Magnani was taken into surgery at Mercy Hospital for an emergency C-section, and daughters Anna and Ava soon entered the world.

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The girls are already proving to be a tough duo. Doctors discovered they were rare monoamniotic twins, also known as mono-mono or MoMo, which means they shared a single placenta and amniotic sac but have separate umbilical cords. About 1-2 percent of all pregnancies are twins, and less than 1 percent of twins are monoamniotic. “There are certain risks that all twins are exposed to, such as preterm delivery, gestational hypertension, and gestational diabetes,” Dr. Julian Robinson, Chief of Obstetrics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital tells Yahoo Parenting. “The risk that is specific to monamniotic twins is the possibility of the cords getting entangled. Additionally, if a cord gets pulled on by fetal movement, it can compress, which can cause the demise of a fetus.”

The risk of carrying monoamniatic twins is so high that they have only about a 50 percent survival rate.  Women pregnant with monoamniotic twins are often admitted to the hospital between 24 and 26 weeks so doctors can monitor their babies’ progress.

Ava and Anna will spend the next few weeks in Mercy Hospital’s NICU for monitoring but are expected to be okay.  “The best thing so far is just watching them sleep,” Magnani tells Yahoo Parenting. “They look so peaceful, like little angels. The thing I’m looking forward to most is getting to bring them home.”

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So how does a woman not know she is six months pregnant with twins? According to a Serbian study from 2010, one in 7225 pregnancies are unknown until the moment of delivery.  “I was having what I thought was my regular period every month, no other symptoms other than a little weight gain,” Magnani says. Her nurses told her that surprise deliveries happen more than people think. And Dr. Robinson wasn’t especially surprised to hear that Magnani had been experiencing what she thought was a period. “Bleeding from the cervix can happen during a pregnancy,” he says.  “The timing in this case could have been coincidental.”

Ava and Anna are adorable, but a surprise set of twins is certainly a shock to the wallet, especially to Magnani and her fiancé James Croskey, who are both students at Des Moines Area Community College.  To help cover their new and unexpected baby expenses, a family friend set up the “Ava and Anna Wellness Fund” on the crowd-funding site GiveForward

Magnani’s story sounds something that would be featured on the one-time TLC show “I Didn’t Know I was Pregnant.”  “I’ve seen the show and I always wondered how people didn’t know,” she says. “I never ever thought it would happen to me.”

Did you have an unusual birthing story?  Share it in the comments below.