Author: Anonymous Twin Mum

Let me just start this by saying I don’t know if I have ever been 100% certain on having babies. My husband and I thought that we would leave things to chance and see what happened, if we didn’t conceive then that was it. Well, little did we know that we would conceive within the first month of leaving things to “chance”!

I guess all the usual things happened in those first few weeks. I took a pregnancy test at home first one was negative, did a second 3 days later which was positive. Went to the GP, had the “I’m pregnant” conversation and was sent for blood tests and an early scan to confirm the pregnancy. I had a conversation with a friend about 3 days before my scan and had a joke saying that I bet that I am carrying twins, we laughed and wrote it off as joke. Well we all know what happened next, we went and had our scan and there were two heartbeats with perfectly defined embryonic structures!

28 weeks pregnant with twins

From that point I had a relatively easy pregnancy, although we had one interesting complication at around 28 weeks. I was doing a day trip for work that took me to a regional area with patchy, at best, mobile reception. I’d had a routine blood test a day or two earlier (at this point I was on fortnightly blood tests). Anyway, so I am away having a great old time then I must have hit a patch of service and I got what felt like a million missed calls, texts and voicemails. Stupidly I listened to the voicemail first which was the admin lady from our obstetricians office saying that they were having trouble getting a hold of me (funny that).

Apparently I needed to get to my obstetricians office immediately and to pack a hospital bag as I would be admitted to hospital. Meanwhile I felt as good as anyone carrying twins would feel at that point. Anyway after much confusion and trying to contact them back it turns out that my liver panel had come back with some abnormal results, so into the obstetricians’ office we go……

After they were finally satisfied that I was actually ok and after a repeat blood test I was allowed to go home. Incidentally I tested positive for glandular fever – quite comical now and I know at the time they were worried about preeclampsia but at the time it was a really stressful thing.

31 weeks and 4 days pregnant with twins

From that point out we were fine, until we hit 31 + 4 I woke up at around 3 am I think it was and everything was wet – at the time I didn’t think much about it I thought perhaps I had peed the bed (pregnant women do that right?) so I cleaned up and went back to bed (idiot!). Next morning I got up and did my normal routine for getting ready to go to work, except I felt like I was constantly peeing myself. Now I am starting to click on that something might be up. So I rang a friend (who is a nurse practitioner) and her daughter who was visiting, who happens to be an obstetrician. Anyway long story short Twin 1’s membranes had ruptured, and my husband was halfway across the country for work…

From that point I was admitted to hospital and on strict bed rest. I was loaded with antibiotics and steroids and passed through the 48 hour critical window with no changes. From that point it was such a waiting game. Every day was the same routine checks from various people at various times.

32 weeks and 4 days pregnant with twins

Exactly 1 week later everything changed, the day started out like all others had, but at about 7 pm I started to have terrible pains in my lower abdomen and my discharge had changed from clear fluid to pink fluid. I knew the drill. I notified the nursing staff, the student midwife came and did a CTG on the babies but couldn’t detect contractions. But I just didn’t feel right, so I called my husband to tell him that he should come in as I just felt “weird” (we lived about 1 hour away from the hospital).

The midwives convinced me that I was constipated and advised me to get up and have a hot shower. Well you know how you think that the midwives should have a pretty good idea at what is happening, so you put faith in them to do the right thing. I got up and prepared myself to have a shower. Well as I was getting ready I felt like I might need to have a bowel motion so I, as you do, went to the toilet. However this is where I stayed, I remember trying to get up off the toilet at one stage but I just couldn’t move.

I delivered the first of my twins into the hospital toilet, unsupervised with no one around.

At 9:02 pm I delivered the first of my twins into the hospital toilet unsupervised with no one around

From here things are a little blurry, I push the call button the midwives came in causally until she realised what had happened. They quickly took Twin 1 away got me off the toilet and onto the bed.

It was then when my husband came running through my hospital room door. He says that at that moment in time I looked like a ghost. I honestly don’t remember much about leaving the ward and getting to the delivery suite. I remember going into the elevator and then into a room in the delivery wing. From there things went quickly but slowly.

At that point everything about labour had stopped, when they did an ultrasound Twin 2 was high, transverse and had a presenting cord. Our obstetrician (not the same one we had been seeing throughout the pregnancy, but an on-call) said that he could break Twin 2’s waters and induce. We responded with what’s best and safest? Twenty minutes later, at 10:32 pm, Twin 2 was delivered via caesarean.

Our NICU/SCN journey with twins born at 32 + 4

Both the twins were rushed to NICU – they were on CPAP for 8 hours overnight and remained in NICU for about 36 hours. After that we were moved to SCN (or the fat farm as it was called) where we remained for the next 4 weeks. The stay in SCN had its ups and downs. The twins presented with all the ‘normal’ premmie baby things: issues regulating body temperature; UV light therapy’ caffeine therapy; pictures with Santa’s hand and Christmas etc. We were finally discharged at 36 + 4.

Life today

There are very few people who know what actually happened to us in hospital, I think that I will struggle with what happened for a while longer. It’s taken me about 2 years to build up the courage to write this, which I have spoken about since joining the Twinfo page when we were still in SCN!

Today we are at the terrible toddler’s stage where life is filled with the joys that are temper tantrums! Many days are filled with laughter, and yelling, but mostly we are grateful that we don’t have persistent health issues from our 32 + 4 babies. We have vague recollections of the past 2 years, and a mild case of PTSD, but we count ourselves as lucky, although there are no more babies on the cards for us one set of twins is enough. Hubby took care of that one…

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