Woman loses unborn babies after rare twin-to-twin transfusion

It's a condition that can occur with identical twins

Vienna Girardi (Getty Images)

A woman has revealed her heartbreak of losing her unborn twins 18 weeks into her pregnancy due to a rare condition called Twin-Twin Transfusion Syndrome (TTTS), which sees one twin taking more nutrients than the other.

The mother is Vienna Girardi, who rose to fame on the 2010 series of American reality TV show, The Bachelor.

In a heartbreaking Facebook post, the 31-year-old announced the news, saying it was the hardest thing she’d ever had to write.

The first sign of TTTS is often that one twin has more fluids than the other, so after her perinatologist noticed that, Girardi had an ultrasound.

That evening, her water broke due to her amniotic sacs rupturing.

She explained that she spent two days in hospital doing everything she could to save her daughters, but nothing worked and her “little angels went to heaven.”

“I don’t know why this happened and I pray the Lord gives me strength to understand why he needed my little girls,” Girardi wrote.

She added that after days lying in bed heartbroken, she agreed to donate her twins to science to help doctors understand why TTTS happen. “I knew my little girls were in heaven already and the pain I feel I would never want any mother to ever feel,” Girardi explained.

“RIP My Sweet Angels. Your mommy will never forget you and I loved you both with my entire heart.”

TTTS can affect identical twins who share a placenta (monochorionic twins). It occurs when there’s an imbalance in the placental blood vessels connecting the twins, meaning the blood doesn’t flow evenly between them.

One gets more blood (the recipient twin) and the other gets less (the donor twin). This results in the recipient twin growing too big due to the extra nutrients and fluid, and the donor twin growing too slowly.

This can put a strain on the recipient twin’s heart who will then try and get rid of the extra fluid by producing more urine. This leads to the recipient twin having too much amniotic fluid around him or her, while the donor twin has very little.

TTTS isn’t hereditary or genetic and it’s not caused by anything a parent does. Sadly, it can happen to anyone.