When Cadence Moore was born, she weighed just 1lb 1oz—less than a sack of flour—and her brother Jaxson weighed 1lb 6oz. At barely 23 weeks and 6 days gestation, the premature couple was delivered via cesarean surgery on September 23 of last year. The twins’ conception was a miracle, and they were born inside the UK’s 24-week legal abortion limit.
The twins were adopted as embryos by their parents, Jourdan and Matt Moore, from an estimated 650,000 fertilized eggs that were left over from IVF parents in the United States. “Finished families confront a choice: pay a storage charge to keep embryos frozen, destroy them, donate them to science, or get embryo rearing,” said Jourdan, 32, of Portland, Oregon.
The kids wouldn’t be at home without us, so we really want to adopt a child and welcome them into our family. After getting married in 2005, housewife Jourdan and construction worker Matt, 32, knew they wanted to conceive a family. Sadly, Jourdan suffers from Crohn’s disease, a chronic intestinal inflammatory disorder. Jourdan’s illness was so severe that the only medication that helped her was methotrexate, which is also used to induce abortions and treat cancer and autoimmune illnesses.
The couple was determined to adopt despite knowing Jourdan couldn’t give birth to a full-term child and waited ten years without success. The couple considered the embryo project a gift from heaven, and their friend Hollie Mentesana offered to act as a surrogate. From a family of anonymous donors who also had one child in the same batch of embryos, they adopted seven of them. The couple learned they would soon become parents to non-natural twins on May 20 after Hollie, a mother of two, acquired two embryos on April 28 of last year.
However, Hollie was hospitalized to St. Vincent’s Hospital in Portland on September 18 with a possible bladder infection after 23 weeks of a healthy pregnancy. There, she received the startling news that she was 10 centimeters dilated and that the infants had a slim chance of surviving and would be delivered via caesarean surgery.
The doctor told me that babies are on the way and that they won’t be born at 23 weeks after looking at me, according to Jourdan. We had to go through a lot to get to that point, so I didn’t want to believe it. We must, however, mentally get ready for their demise as there is no other option. They had the option of receiving palliative treatment instead of resuscitation and life support, with specialists advising against it.
The survival rate on resuscitation is 21%,” explains Jourdan. The doctors wanted to let nature take its course, but we couldn’t give up on our miracle babies. Thankfully, we didn’t. And now we have two beautiful one-year-olds.It’s amazing.
