Preemie Battled to Survive After Her Twin Died in the Womb. One Year Later, She’s Thriving and Living Up to Her Name (Exclusive)

A California mom is opening up to PEOPLE about grappling with twin loss — and how her surviving baby girl is now thriving over a year later.

Sarah Wood, 35, and her husband of nearly eight years, Jason, 38, were surprised when they learned they were expecting twins in the spring of 2024.

The couple from Bakersfield conceived through in-vitro fertilization, which they also used with their first child, son George. This time, however, the embryo split. “We were pretty freaked out. Even our doctor seemed shocked,” Sarah recalls. “I asked him, ‘How often does this happen?’ And he said, ‘Maybe one transfer a year that I do.’ ”

About 17 weeks later, the couple learned during an ultrasound that Sarah was experiencing a rare complication known as twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). 

According to the Cleveland Clinic, TTTS occurs when one twin — known as the donor twin — receives more nutrients than the other, depriving the second twin, the recipient twin, of what they need to grow.

At the time of her ultrasound, her TTTS had progressed to stage 2, the point at which prenatal surgery is typically on the table.

Despite the severity of her case, Sarah says she was forced to wait a week to undergo the surgery since most of the local doctors qualified to perform the procedure happened to be out of the country for a convention.

After finally tracking down a doctor, Sarah and Jason “drove straight down” to Los Angeles — which was over two hours away — where she was scheduled to have surgery as soon as possible. At this point, she was experiencing stage 4 TTTS, the penultimate severity.

By then, there were concerns for both of her girls. Iris, the recipient twin, was going into heart failure while her sister Norah was “incredibly small” and “had no fluid around her,” according to Sarah.

Both twins survived the initial fetal surgery and Sarah was later discharged, but spent the next four weeks undergoing two ultrasounds a week just to make sure everything still looked okay.

Soon, however, Sarah began not feeling well and her OBGYN told her to get checked out at a hospital.

That’s when Sarah and Jason got devastating news: Norah was still alive, but Iris had died within the last 24 hours.

“I started screaming,” Sarah tells PEOPLE. “I wasn’t prepared for that.”

After three weeks in the hospital, Sarah was sent home and ordered to remain on bedrest for the remainder of her pregnancy.

However, one week later, Sarah, who was still just 27 weeks pregnant, “went into full-blown labor” late at night and even began hemorrhaging.

The couple rushed to the hospital fearing that Norah might not survive.

Although they waited as long as they could, two days later, Sarah and her doctors agreed it was time for her to have a cesarean section. “I felt really guilty because I wasn’t sure if she was ready” she tells PEOPLE.

Fortunately, despite her tiny size — baby Norah was born on Aug. 20, 2024, weighing 1 lb., 7 oz. — doctors and nurses at Lauren Small Children’s Center at Bakersfield Memorial Hospital were surprised to learn that Norah received a “super high” Apgar score, which gauges a baby’s health immediately after birth.

“That was really great news, a huge sigh of relief,” Sarah tells PEOPLE.

Norah was then taken to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), where she spent the next 100 days growing and recovering.

Although Norah experienced several “Brady episodes,” during which her heart rate and oxygen would plummet, she kept making progress and was officially released from the hospital on Thanksgiving.

In fact, Sarah and Jason were in the middle of preparing a feast for the doctors and nurses at the NICU as a thank you for taking care of her daughter when they found out the good news.

“I thought, ‘Are you joking? What?’ We knew it was getting closer, but they didn’t let us on at all that would’ve been that day,” Sarah tells PEOPLE.

As the nurses completed their discharge paperwork, the couple finished cooking — and a short time later, Sarah quips that she and her husband “literally traded Thanksgiving dinner for our daughter.”

It has now been more than a year since Norah first came home — and this year, they got to have an even bigger Christmas together.

Though the first Christmas “was a little bit of a blur, Sarah tells PEOPLE she and her family did “all of the Christmas traditions that you think of” this time around, including visiting Santa multiple times, baking cookies and seeing the holiday lights at their local zoo.

As her daughter continues to grow up, Sarah says that Norah “lives up to” her middle name: Wilde.

“She’s happy. She’s got a ton of hair. And she is wild,” the mom says. “She’s all over the place, not quite yet walking, but she wants to be.”

The family has also found a meaningful way to honor her twin sister and keep her close, building a special iris flower garden in their backyard, which Sarah says was “very therapeutic.”

“The garden is definitely the most helpful and the thing that has really stuck for me,” Sarah explains. “Noticing irises naturally in the world is really helpful for us.” 

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Speaking about the doctors and nurses who stood by her side during one of the most challenging times in her family’s life, Sarah has nothing but gratitude.

“I really appreciate all of the levity they brought to a really hard time,” she says.

“I’m so grateful to all healthcare workers who can be personable,” she later adds. “I was fortunate to have all great people, with all great bedside manner, that felt like friends and family, that made all of the difference for me, every step of the way, it was that part.”