'A Crazy Journey:' OU Health Treats Rare Form Of Twins

A metro couple is facing uncertainty after they found out their pregnancy is an extremely rare form of twins called mono chorionic monoamniotic twins.

OU Health says Oklahoma hasn't seen a case of twins like Amanda and Tanner Copeland’s since 2020.

The risks are so high that the Copelands team of doctors says Amanda will have to spend the last six weeks of her pregnancy at the hospital on bed rest.

“Yeah, it's been a crazy journey,” the couple said. “Yeah, that's for sure.”

Amanda and Tanner met in high school before marrying several years later in 2021.

Amanda says she's a proud boy mom with one son named Baylor and now twin boys on the way.

 “I'm so excited. I love having boys,” she said.

But Amanda said the news that her twins were mono twins came as a shock.

 “We were both scared. It was scary, yeah,” Tanner said.

“Her case is quite rare. Her twin pair is about 1% of all twins,” Dr. Marvin Williams, a maternal-fetal medicine specialist at OU Health said.

Dr. Williams is one of a team of doctors treating Amanda.

“Two babies that share one placenta and one sac. Their umbilical cords are very, very close together,” Dr. Williams explained this abnormality is what makes Amanda’s pregnancy so dangerous.

“So, the babies are moving. They're flipping around in utero. And those cords can entangle if they entangle so much. There could be some degree of compromise with respect to the blood flow from the placentas to the babies,” he said.

“So right now everything's fine. Everything's good, but it'll get dangerous later on,” Amanda said.

When that time comes, the Copelands say they're leaning on each other and their doctors.

“We just gotta be positive about it. And then, if something happens, we'll tackle that together,” she said.

Since Amanda is self-employed and will be unable to work while she’s at the hospital, family friends have come together to create a GoFundMe to help support the Copelands through their medical journey.

If you’d like to donate CLICK HERE.