Author: Anita Sweeney
A mum I know just told me about her prem singleton (now school age), currently undergoing numerous medical tests. I bawled my eyes out in bed that night. Instantly I recognised that while the information was upsetting, my reaction to someone else’s problems was potentially bigger than it should have been?
The very next day, my son Patrick, comes out of his classroom on the home bell sobbing and I am immediately thrown into panic and emotional overdrive before I even know what is wrong.
Our NICU journey with twins
Patrick was born at 32+5 and 1.3kg after months of only just putting on enough weight each scan to keep him in. He was a fighter and went straight to the Special Care nursery while his identical twin brother Liam at 1.7kg did not cope as well with his in-utero time being cut short and spent his first two weeks in NICU.
I remember in these early days sitting beside Patrick’s humidi-crib often. At Mercy, the cribs are arranged from most critical through to ‘almost ready to leave’ so the boys were not together in the early days. Patrick was somewhere in the middle while Liam was in the highest NICU bay before you went through the doors into the darkened ‘high-care’ area. Liam was in a 1 nurse to 4 baby area while Pat’s nurse to baby ratio was probably closer to 1:12. While I would always go and see Liam when I arrived, I would ultimately end up spending more time with Pat. At the time, I justified this as Liam not needing me because the nurses checked on him more often, I may have even just felt more at ease away from the more critical babies. But in hindsight, I think I was protecting Patrick.
Thoughts about my twins
I’ve always had a strong feeling that Liam, Twin 1, was the baby that was meant to be born and Pat was the old soul that snuck along for the ride. Before birth we chose the name Patrick Leonard, Leonard after my grandfather who had passed. Patrick at age 6 once confidently declared while gnawing on a whole carrot that he used to be a rabbit after he was Leonard.
I often catch myself feeling like this precious soul that snuck through the system could be taken from me at any moment. When I have this thought it is always intertwined with losing my sister in 2018. She was diagnosed with terminal cancer soon after I found out I was pregnant with twins. We had been trying to time our second pregnancies together but instead, I got 2 babies and she got a death sentence.
My little sister was a rainbow baby, born after two miscarriages. When she was around 9, I would have been about 13, I remember walking to the milk bar and grabbing her arm just in time to pull her out of the way of a car that screamed around the corner. I’m sure she would have died that day had I not saved her. When she did die 25 years later, the thought hit me that she was never supposed to have been born and the universe had been trying to steal her back this whole time. I can’t help but wonder if Pat isn’t meant to be here either.
Only now, nearly 8 years on, I’m starting to realise that the trauma of losing my sister combined with the stress of a twin pregnancy and pre-term birth may still be affecting me.
Post natal depression and twins. Or was it PTSD and twins?
Don’t get me wrong, I knew I was depressed in the early days. My MHCN diagnosed me with post natal depression, my GP agreed that it was certainly depression in some form and prescribed anti depressants which I stayed on for around 4-5 yrs. Now, I’m generally happy. I enjoy life and look forward to things, especially when it comes to my kids.
I miss my sister, and her 40th birthday this year was really hard but generally I’ve come to terms with the fact that she’s gone and I can focus on the good times that we had. I’m mostly in control of my emotions. But when Patrick is sick or unhappy I’m a mess. Speaking to other twin parents, it seems to be fairly common to be extra protective of the smallest twin, or the child who had the greatest health issues at birth. But coupled with the grief of losing my sister it’s highly likely that my extreme stress response to Patrick’s tears is a PTSD symptom.
PTSD and twins
I’m not sure that I am comfortable pursuing this self diagnosis of PTSD and twins. After all PTSD is reserved for war survivors right? I had a fairly straightforward pregnancy and birth and my kids have no major side effects of a pre-term birth. Well that’s the story I’ve carried for 8 years at least.
But even without the added trauma of my sister’s diagnosis, I still recall the anxiety of every single scan and medical appointment. From the day of my 12wk scan when I found out it was twins, every thought was founded in stress. How would we manage raising 3 kids 16 mths apart (OMG we need a bigger car)? Why can I never feel Twin 1 moving? Am I coming home after this check up or will I end up in hospital?
Week 29 was the big scare when my OB said we had to deliver because Twin 2 wasn’t growing, but he had to move me to the care of a new OB in a tertiary hospital. Thankfully the new OB kept them in another month but it was a month of countless scans and uncertainty. Even in the following years of ‘no pre-term birth side effects’ as I always say, we had 3 hospitalisations for Patrick’s asthma, a common side effect of a prem-birth.
My advice for those who have experienced the added stresses and complications of a multiple birth
It’s no wonder I still live in a slight state of panic particularly around my precious little Twin 2, Patrick. The changes that a woman endures both physically and mentally giving birth to one child are significant. So for those of us who have experienced the added stresses and complications of a multiple birth, no matter how small the details may seem, our trauma is valid. Acknowledge it, and understand if it may be causing you to parent from a state of panic. I will never stop being ferociously protective of my boys, but I hope in future I can do so without an emotional meltdown.
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