Kayla Ibarra, a mother to an 18-month-old, was overjoyed when she found out that she was having twins.
Her first baby was born healthy and everything seemed completely normal during the pregnancy of her twins.
But her pregnancy took a very different turn when she was almost 22 weeks along. Ibarra was running a daycare when she caught a cold from one of the kids she was caring for.
She decided to call her midwife when she discovered that she was bleeding when she went to the bathroom.
Her midwife urged her to go to the hospital to make sure she didn’t have a bladder infection.
“I sat there for four hours and was growing increasingly uncomfortable,” Ibarra wrote on her blog Imperfect Motherhood.
“I was having what I thought was Braxton Hicks. I called my midwife and told her the nurses hadn’t seen me yet and I was super uncomfortable. She was floored and called right up. The nurses told her they ‘forgot I was there.'”
But that wasn’t the start of the hard time Ibarra had with hospital staff.
Ibarra started growing more uncomfortable and, eventually, her water broke.
Ibarra was going into labor at just 21 weeks and five days.
“Through my tears, I said, ‘What’s going to happen to my daughters?’ As she [a nurse] was wheeling me back upstairs she said, ‘The babies will be born today and they will die.’ They will die. Tears still swell in my eyes when I speak those words,” Ibarra writes.
Ibarra says the nurse again told her that there was nothing that could be done, her twins would be born that day and would die.
Ibarra was struck by how cold and matter-of-fact this nurse was.
They begged the doctor to call a London, Ontario hospital and ask if they would see her.
Ibarra says the doctor refused.
She then asked for pain medication but Ibarra says the doctor said, “This is going to be quick. Let’s get it over with.”
Even though Ibarra was angry, she decided to pray to God and let him know how angry she was.
After that, she says her contractions stopped.
“After arguing with the doctor and my labor stopping, she agreed to leave me be,” Ibarra explains. “She told me she wouldn’t let me see the twins or hear their heartbeats because it was a ‘waste of time.'”
Ibarra said she was moved to another room and continually pressured to start labor. A high-risk obstetrician allegedly told her that she could die if she didn’t give birth and that no other hospital would help her until she was at least 23 weeks along.
Ibarra says that the OB refused to call London, Ontario to ask if she could be seen.
She also claims that he denied her medication Ibarra said would help the twins’ lungs and brain to develop.
“I spent those four days in the hospital BEGGING them to call London (refused every single time) and begging them for the medication (denied every single time). I lay there crying, praying, and crying some more,” Ibarra says.
Ibarra began going into labor again, but this time a new doctor walked into the room when they were preparing her to give birth.
He told her that he would call NICUs in the area and ask if they would take her.
About 15 minutes later, he told her: “TWO hospitals agreed to take you, we’re going to London and I’m coming with you!”
When she arrived at the new hospital she was told that her oxygen was super low.
Apparently, Ibarra had pneumonia and she says the previous hospital didn’t detect it because they didn’t look her over at all.
Still, even at this hospital a neonatologist tried to convince her to “let the girls go” but Ibarra refused.
Luna was born weighing 14 ounces and 11 inches and Ema was born 1 pound and 12 inches.
The girls ended up spending 115 days in the NICU but came home before their due date.
Now they are completely healthy and their parents have made it their life’s mission to raise awareness for babies who are born at 22 weeks.
“We want the world to know they CAN SURVIVE and they CAN thrive. We are now ambassadors with the hospital who saved the twins. We have done radio interviews, been in newsletters, and the list goes on,” she writes. “We went from a 0% chance of survival to celebrating over ONE YEAR OF LIFE!”
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