After many trials, bringing home twins

THE PARENTS: Jessica Gliwa, 37, and George Checkum, 40, of Olde Richmond

THE KIDS: Barrett Baxter and Margot May, born Aug. 19, 2020

HOW THEY’RE DIFFERENT: Margot is cranky with reflux most days but can sleep 13 hours at a stretch, from 7 p.m. until 8 the next morning. Barrett, who’s genial during the day, stays up all night.

Jessica didn’t want to leave her mother’s house.

Never mind that she and George had been dating for more than a decade — ever since she was 16, he was 18, and the two would walk to the playground together or take a bus to the Riverview movie theater.

George had his own place, a small house in Port Richmond. “I did not want to move in,” Jessica recalls. “I was very, very close with my mother and my sister. We all lived in the house where I grew up, a three-story, block-to-block house on Cumberland Street.

“He said, ‘We have to move on with our lives together.’ It was just time.”

George emptied closets to make room for Jessica’s things, and they redecorated, but for months, she still gravitated back to her mother’s place for dinners. “I guess I’m not one for change,” Jessica says. “Eventually, I transitioned.”

She wanted kids — her father was one of 17 children, and Jessica is close with her many cousins — but George felt reluctant. “I was always the guy who didn’t think I was going to have kids,” he says. “But things change.”

They tried on their own. They consulted a fertility specialist and did four rounds of intrauterine inseminations. “I had so much jealousy for everybody around me who was getting pregnant,” Jessica says. “I didn’t understand why it wasn’t happening for me.”

When Jessica’s mother died in 2018, Jessica felt tempted to give up. “But my mother was so excited [about grandchildren] and along on the journey; she would never have wanted me to do that.”

They upped the ante to IVF: two embryos; two transfers. Neither one worked. “I was 36, and my doctor said we needed to get more aggressive,” Jessica says. So for the next IVF cycle, the doctor transferred two embryos.

Ten days later, the good news came: You’re pregnant. And a few days after that, an ultrasound provided the kicker. “When she called me, she gasped, and I said, ‘It’s twins, right?’ ” George remembers. “I had a whole tornado of thoughts; it would be twice everything. It was a lot to take in.”

Jessica’s mind, meantime, was also in tumult: thoughts of school, day care, finances, the size of their house. George reassured her that they’d figure it out.

“Our roles reversed,” Jessica says. “I’d secretly wanted twins, but when the reality set in, he switched and became my rock.”

Her second trimester coincided with the pandemic: a boon because she was able to work from home, but also sad, because it meant remaining isolated at a time when she longed to share the pregnancy with cousins, siblings, and friends.

Blood work had indicated that one of the twins was a boy. “Let’s be surprised when the other one comes out,” Jessica told George. They decorated the nursery in neutral grays, featuring a black-and-white drawing of a bunny made by Jessica’s mother when she was in high school. It had hung in the living room when Jessica was growing up.

Jessica knew nothing about twins, so she sponged up every tip she could from podcasts, articles, discussion boards, and online moms’ groups. At nearly 33 weeks, she didn’t feel well and landed at Pennsylvania Hospital, where George works as a surgical tech. She was having contractions; doctors admitted her, administered steroid shots, and kept her for a long weekend.

Jessica begged to go home; Pennsylvania Hospital was where her mother had died, and she hated the memories of those bedside vigils. But when she was discharged, she was a wreck — clammy, shaking, and sleepless for several nights.

George insisted she return to the hospital. “They took my blood pressure and started prepping me for surgery. I had preeclampsia; my pressure was some crazy number. They said, ‘We’re going to do an emergency C-section.’ ”

During the surgery, Jessica hemorrhaged and lost two liters of blood. The first baby to come was a boy, as they were expecting. “The second one came out, and I was screaming, ‘What is the other baby?’ George said, ‘Oh, my God, it’s a girl.’ ”

The twins were whisked to the NICU — they needed help with breathing and feeding — but Jessica, who was catheterized and on a magnesium drip after two blood transfusions, couldn’t see them until two days later.

“George took me down in a wheelchair. I thought we’d be able to go in together, but [the COVID-19 rules] permitted only one parent at a time.” Jessica sat between the two isolettes, fighting her own postsurgical pain and staring at her children.

“I remember being really scared. They looked so little and fragile, with all their tubes. It just broke my heart.”

The babies remained in the hospital for three weeks. Every day, Jessica’s sister drove her to the NICU; eventually, she was able to hold the babies — first Barrett, then Margot. She fed them from a tiny, two-ounce bottle. She joked that Margot looked like George’s side of the family and Barrett looked like hers.

Margot was discharged first. “I was crying hysterically,” Jessica remembers. “I did not want to leave him there, alone in the NICU. I had so much guilt, bringing home one and not the other.”

But the following day, after Barrett’s circumcision, he, too, was cleared to leave. George’s mother stayed with Margot, and when the couple returned home with Barrett, Jessica was stunned to see the front of their house festooned: signs shouting “It’s a boy! It’s a girl!” and a ribbon wreath.

“George is not very emotional. This was so not like him, but he’d gone to the store and bought all these decorations.”

They posed for a photo in front of the house — their first family picture. It was Sept. 9, Jessica’s mother’s birthday. “I felt like it was her giving me a sign,” she says. “Like she was the one who sent me these twins.”