As Beachwood Triplets Fight To Live, Community Rallies To Help Family

BEACHWOOD, NJ — Friends and neighbors are rallying support for a Beachwood couple whose newborn triplets are fighting for their lives in a Texas hospital.

When Ty and Susan Krean of Beachwood first learned she was pregnant, they initially thought they were adding a third child to their family, which already includes sons Aidan and Oliver. Ty Krean works at Krean's Auto Body; Susan is a teacher in the Toms River Regional School District.

According to a GoFundme campaign created to assist the family, the couple quickly learned Susan was pregnant with fraternal twins. But they were in for an even bigger surprise: At Susan's 12-week checkup, the doctor and ultrasound technician discovered one of the babies had split into identical twins — meaning Susan was now carrying triplets.

"Of course, with this excitement came a great deal of worry," wrote Kelley Amato, who created the fundraising campaign for the Kreans. "This pregnancy put Sue at the top of the 'high risk' category. Although the news was astonishing, Sue and Ty made the decision not to announce the pregnancy of triplets until they were sure that her babies would progress to a point where they would be safe and viable."

At Susan's 24-week appointment, the doctors discovered the identical twins were in distress due to twin-twin transfusion syndrome, where abnormal blood vessel connections cause the fetuses to share blood supply, according to the Texas Children's Hospital website. The result is one twin pumps blood to the other twin. Because it has more blood, the recipient twin makes too much urine, which may enlarge the bladder, produce too much amniotic fluid and cause heart failure. The donor twin has lower levels of blood, amniotic fluid and urine, and a smaller bladder, according to the website.

Doctors found Baby A had six times as much fluid as Baby B and had signs of cardiac distress, Amato wrote. Susan's doctors connected her with specialists at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, and Susan and Ty traveled to Houston. As they were preparing Susan for surgery to separate the vessels of the placenta of the identical twins (to give all three babies a better chance), Susan's water broke and all three babies — all boys, each weighing just more than a pound — were delivered between 6:22 and 6:23 p.m. on Thursday, May 4, at 24 weeks gestational age.

The boys — Wyatt, Sawyer and Holden — "have a long road ahead of them before they can even think of transferring the babies closer to home," Amato wrote. Ty had to return to New Jersey to work and care for the boys, while Susan remains in Houston with the triplets.

As of Thursday morning, the GoFundme campaign had raised more than $12,000 that Amato said will "ease the stress of traveling back and forth from New Jersey to Texas as well as the financial burdens that will come with this medical journey."

To donate to the campaign, click here.

Photo via GoFundme