27/03/2017
“This might sound cliché but from a very young age, I always knew I wanted to become a mum. I always told myself that I wanted to have children before my 30th birthday and unsurprising to my somewhat stubborn and determined nature, I accomplished this. Little did I know, however, that my journey to parenthood would be such a stormy one. Just seven weeks into my first pregnancy, we found out we were having twins. Hard to accept at first, it didn’t take us long to get excited about this new journey together. At sixteen weeks we were told that our babies were two boys and we immediately started looking for names we liked. A textbook pregnancy with not a worry in the world other than the pounds, which were piling on fast but I was glowing. I enjoyed the comfy clothes, feeling the boys kicking about and “eating for three” but my world started to crumble a few weeks later.
At twenty three weeks I was admitted to hospital with an unexpected bleed and was advised to rest for a week, which I happily accepted. At twenty five weeks I made my way to hospital again after an agonising day at work with severe back pain, which to my surprise was “the onset of labour”. Hours later I found myself being rushed to a private hospital in Malaga, in the dark, in an ill-equipped ambulance with my family following closely behind. Behind my brave face there were tears streaming, panic, uncertainty and guilt. “What did I do wrong?”
Despite the bed rest and having three different treatments to halt labour, my twin boys were delivered five minutes apart via emergency C-section on Thursday 2nd September 2010. Leon and Owen,
weighing 900g and 940g respectively were healthy boys, and absolutely perfect in my eyes, but at only twenty seven weeks gestation, their lungs were extremely immature to cope with the outside world. They both required specialist medical treatment to stabilise their critical conditions and what was supposed to be the happiest day of my life turned into the most agonizing.
After most births, the new mother gets to hold her babies, spend time with them and enjoy that bonding time. My experience was nothing like this. My twins were pulled out, separated from one another and placed in incubators to fight for their lives. They couldn’t have their mummy with them. All they had was a new noisy environment, surrounded by machines, tubes and wires inside their new glasshouses. All I had was the physical pain from a major operation and the emotional confusion, sadness and poignant emptiness I felt back in my hospital bed, across the hall from my babies."
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Happy belated Mother's day!
