Miracle twins: Golden couple have procedure to save their babies

BY DEB HURLEY BROBST DBROBST@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM

Zoey and Kenna Conley are typical 5-year-old twins: full of life, always busy and best friends.

ey are athletic, smart, and at times, they drive their older brother Beckham crazy. ey are excited to start kindergarten in the fall.

According to dad Tyler Conley, they are perfect.

But the twins’ lives didn’t start quite as perfectly. Tyler and Kendal Conley of Golden learned when Kendal was 17 weeks pregnant that the twins had the sometimesdeadly Twin-to-Twin Transfusion Syndrome. is rare condition is only seen in identical twins who share a placenta where one fetus donates a signi cant portion of its uid and blood to the other fetus.

With specialized medical care and a successful in-utero surgery performed through the Colorado Fetal Care Center at Children’s Hospital Colorado, the twins are now happy, healthy and a handful for their parents.

Finding medical care e Conleys were not overly surprised they were having twins, since twins run in both of their families. e couple went to the Colorado Fetal Care Center and met Dr. Henry Galan, a fetal surgeon and maternal fetal medicine specialist. He is one of few doctors in the nation who performs the in-utero surgery to reverse the syndrome. e couple quickly learned about the syndrome, how it was negatively a ecting the babies and what the treatment options were. With inutero surgery, they also learned the chances of having one healthy baby was 95% and two healthy babies was 85%.

By the time Kendal had a 12-week ultrasound, doctors were seeing things they didn’t like.

“Normally, there is a nice, stable blood ow between twins,” Galan explained. “With (the syndrome), that blood ow becomes imbalanced, and one baby is giving more blood to the other.”

Galan performed laser abla- tion surgery to burn the tiny blood vessels to block them from communicating between the twins. Tyler said it took several hours for Galan and his sta to map the placenta and create a plan to x the issues. e surgery itself took less than three minutes.

Complete bedrest

Although the surgery was successful, both babies shared an amniotic sac, so at 19 weeks, Kendal was at home on complete bedrest; at 26 weeks, she went to Children’s Hospital to wait to deliver her babies; and at 30-1/2 weeks, she delivered two healthy babies — Zoey weighed 3.5 pounds and Kenna 4 pounds — on Jan. 4, 2018.

For Kendal, the hardest part was the time she was at home on bedrest because she would go to the doctor once a week to look for two heartbeats.

“We were praying for two heartbeats,” Tyler said. “We were hoping the two were alive.” e babies spent nine weeks in the neonatal intensive care unit at Children’s Hospital, and the family came home close to the babies’ original due date.

Kendal said being in Children’s Hospital waiting to give birth gave her time to learn to knit, read books and walk the hallways.

“I was spoiled,” she said. “I made some great friends with the nurses and doctors. It was pretty special.”

Galan, who still stays in touch with the family, called the Conleys a remarkable couple.

“Super positive,” he said. “Mindset has a lot to do with it. ose kids are in nitely loved. It always does our hearts the best to see these kids growing up.”

His advice is for women to have ultrasounds early in their pregnancies to determine the number of fetuses and if there are twins, whether they are identical.

The twins today

Even though they were born nearly nine weeks early, the twins have no health issues, no learning issues and are the same as other 5-year-olds.

“ ey are alike in so many ways,” Tyler said. “ ey have the same likes and dislikes with food and clothes.” variety of colors and is now being offered to the local market. Your home can be a showplace in your vicinity. We will make it worth your while if we can use your home.

Yet, the Conleys believe Kenna is destined to be a doctor or scientist.