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 CHICAGO (Ivanhoe Newswire) -- One day they're in the middle of a healthy pregnancy. The next, they're forced to deal with the loss of their babies. Thousands of women suffer from incompetent cervixes, but don't realize it until it's too late. There's a solution that's making dreams come true.
Maryann Gates treasures every moment she spends with her daughters. She knows what it's like to lose it all.
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"There's always still that part that still hurts and still bothers you and you wonder what could've been or what they would look like or where they would be now or what they would be doing," Gates told Ivanhoe.
Her first pregnancy ended at just five months. The twin girls she carried were healthy, but Gates's body forced her to deliver too soon. Twenty minutes after they were born, her babies died.
 Gates was diagnosed with an incompetent cervix -- a condition that causes 20 to 25 percent of second trimester losses.
"The cervix, just by gravity, falls open and the baby will literally fall out," Arthur F. Haney, M.D., an OB/GYN at the University of Chicago Medical Center, explained to Ivanhoe.
Dr. Haney is one of a few doctors offering a solution called a transabdominal cerclage. He opens the stomach and places a band around the upper part of the cervix. The constrictive band keeps the baby in the uterus until it's time to deliver by C-section.
"If you put the abdominal cerclage in properly, it's virtually a guarantee that you'll deliver a baby at term," Dr. Haney said.
It's typically done before a planned pregnancy, but Gates had the band placed while she was pregnant with her daughter Katrina. The one-time procedure also allowed her to have a second baby -- Isabella
 "They're my world and I would go through all of it 100 times again," Gates said.
Most prenatal exams don't include checking for incompetent cervixes, so women don't realize they have a problem until they've lost a pregnancy. The transabdominal cerclage has a 95 percent success rate of a woman delivering a full-term baby.
For additional research on this article, click here.
To read Ivanhoe's full-length interview with Dr. Haney, click here.
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If this story or any other Ivanhoe story has impacted your life or prompted you or someone you know to seek or change treatments, please let us know by contacting Melissa Medalie at mmedalie@ivanhoe.com.
FOR MORE INFORMATION, PLEASE CONTACT:
John Easton, Director of Medical Center Communications
University of Chicago Medical Center
John.easton@uchospitals.edu
This article was reported by Ivanhoe.com, who offers Medical Alerts by e-mail every day of the week. To subscribe, go to: http://www.ivanhoe.com/newsalert/.
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