My name is Christina Burns. I am starting this blog to honor the memory of our son Cayden who was taken from us too soon from a neural tube defect called anencephaly. I was told in Aug. 09 that we were having twins. We were so overwhelmed with joy, but a short month later our lives came crashing down when we were told that baby b had something we had never heard of, a condition called anencephaly. We were then given the options of carrying both babies to term, selective reduction( terminating baby b) or ending the whole pregnancy. The choices were never even considered, I knew immediately that I would carry them both to term and let God decide when he would take our sweet baby. I went home from the specialist that day with so many questions. I researched anencephaly for hours on the computer only to come across terrible images of babies with this diagnosis. I cried myself to sleep every night asking why.
All I had left to look forward to was my next ultrasound so I could see both my babies and pray they were wrong. I was lucky enough that I had to have an ultrasound every month to make sure everything was ok with baby a, but I was always told nothing had changed. When I asked for ultrasound pictures, I was always told no, they were not something I would want, so I always went home with pictures of his feet or hands, but finally when I was about 30 weeks pregnant, we demanded pictures of both babies and to my surprise, it was one of the most beautiful pictures I'd ever seen. He was so perfect to me regardless of what he had. 5 short weeks later, my precious baby boys were born 26 minutes apart. Cayden amazed us all and lived almost 3 days. We even got to take him home from the hospital. He went to heaven 3 hours after arriving at home. Cayden- we miss you so much!!