Program For Multiples

I've been on a personal crusade to educate moms of multiples for a long time now, and to my true delight, Texas Children's Hospital has come up with a resource that is like none other for this for this special group of moms-to-be. Four years ago, we started our Fetal Intervention program at Texas Children's. We were seeing many complicated twin pregnancies coming here for care and treatment, but many moms were being referred to us too late. It became apparent that we needed to increase awareness for proper evaluation, detection and treatment.{C}Fast forward to today and our newest brainchild — Program for Multiples. The program is a half-day, one-time evaluation for moms newly diagnosed with multiples (between 11-18 weeks of their pregnancy), and it's really revolutionary in preparing them for what lies ahead over the next months. During this one-day program, we educate these moms and work with them to develop a customized health and nutrition plan for them and their babies. We also identify potential risk factors and early complications associated with multiples. This program is really unique to Texas Children's, but I wish that all families who were expecting multiples could have the benefit of a center that is so educated about their specific needs. I know that every family who walks through our doors will carefully be screened for twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome and more importantly, directed towards proper treatment if it's diagnosed. My heart breaks every time a patient comes to us too late to save their babies from TTTS. We performed our 200th TTTS surgery a few months ago, and we're doing everything we can to educate women on the importance of early diagnosis. In fact, we recently created a video that helps explain TTTS better, because unfortunately, not all moms have a resource like the Program for Multiples, where they can find out everything they need to know from the start. One day hopefully there will be initiatives like our Program for Multiples throughout the country — and even around the world. In the meantime though, I'm sticking to my crusade and doing everything I can to educate others about TTTS, and to make sure local moms know that they have an invaluable resource right here at Texas Children's Hospital, in the Program for Multiples.