Four Miracles (page 2 of 4)

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Photographed by Shannon Taggart

Joe and Roseann Errante with their triplets.

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Photographed by Shannon Taggart

The triplets with Joe, Roseann and Anthony, at 17 months old.

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Photographed by Shannon Taggart

The triplets with Joe, Roseann and Anthony, at 17 months old.

When we first found out I was pregnant, we didn't want to get too excited because so many things can go wrong with triplets

Something Wrong

The Errantes spent the next morning, a Thursday, in the ER at Stony Brook University Medical Center, where Roseann was scheduled to deliver her triplets in eight weeks. Doctors monitored the heart rate of the mother and babies, and measured the mother's blood pressure and ran a battery of blood tests. By noon, the couple had learned that all the test results were normal. Feeling somewhat reassured and thinking that maybe the pain was just the indigestion that can occur with pregnancy, they returned home. But Roseann's pain got worse.

Says Joe, "All during the pregnancy, I'd been the one researching everything that could go wrong, and I never told Roseann anything unless it pertained to her. She can be a worrier, and she has hypertension, so I didn't want her blood pressure to shoot up unnecessarily. Now suddenly, something was going wrong, and I couldn't help her."

By Friday morning, Roseann's chest was still throbbing with every breath. "My wife is not a complainer, so I knew it had to be something serious," adds Joe, who took Roseann directly to the Maternal Fetal Medicine offices at the hospital.

"I didn't know what was going on, but I knew whatever I was seeing was atypical," says J. Gerald Quirk, MD, the obstetrician who had also examined Roseann the morning before. He admitted her for more in-depth cardiology tests and general observation.

On Friday and Saturday, Roseann had more blood tests, EKGs to measure her heart rate, ultrasound exams of her legs to look for blood clots, as well as chest x-rays. Joe sat by her side as, one by one, the test results again came back normal. Outwardly, he was his usual jovial self, joking with the doctors, trying to keep things light so his wife wouldn't worry. But he was getting increasingly nervous: "They kept coming into the room, saying, 'Great news, it's not this' or 'Great news, it's not that.' But I knew it wasn't good that they couldn't find anything wrong -- and my wife was still in pain."

Meanwhile, Roseann was sitting up and watching TV and walking around. As far as the hospital staff were concerned, she seemed to be in great spirits. "I'm pretty good at hiding my pain, and if I kept calm and didn't breathe too deeply, it did help," Roseann recalls. "I kept my hand on my stomach and felt the babies kicking, or watched the fetal monitors the whole time. I was thinking, As long as the babies are moving, I'm okay. They helped to keep me calm, even though inside I knew something was terribly wrong."

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