2 Months Old- Happy World Prematurity Day

Today Emily and Sophie are 2 months old. They have had a lovely day meeting their Great Grandad for the first time and already have more Christmas party invites than their Mummy!

Rather aptly (seeing as it is their 2 month birthday but it should only be their 1st), today is also World Prematurity Day. Today is a day for raising awareness of premature birth and promoting research and treatment especially in the developing world.

Now as a mother to 4 premature babies this is really important to me. Oliver and Matthew were born at 24 weeks and 3 days gestation, right at the limits of viability. 4 days earlier they could have been legally aborted and 4 days earlier the doctors wouldn't have had to intervene when they were born. However, Oliver and Matthew did have a chance of survival. They were lucky enough to be born in a hospital in the developed world and taken straight to a state of the art neonatal unit where everyone did their best to save them. There are many parts of the world where they simply wouldn't have been given the chance.

Emily and Sophie are at the other end of the spectrum for premature babies. Prematurity is defined as birth before 37 weeks gestation and they were born at 36 weeks and 2 days. They didn't need SCBU but they did need a helping hand to start feeding and to keep warm. They also had the benefit of antenatal cortesoids to help their lungs develop before they were even born. Again, if we lived elsewhere, whilst I'm sure they would have been OK, they may well not be the healthy little girls they are now.

Also, there are so many things that could have happened with the girls. At 23 weeks, when I had my stitch put in, I was told that if I didn't have the procedure, we had a 50 percent chance of them arriving before 25 weeks. There is no doubt in my mind that Emily and Sophie have had the start in life that they have due to fabulous medical care and scientific research, something that not all babies have the benefits of.

Through both my pregnancies I have met many other mums of premmies with babies who were born at anything from 25 weeks to 35 weeks gestation. Most of them have their babies home with them, but I'm pretty sure that every single one of them would tell you that their journey hasn't been easy and many of their children will have health issues related to their prematurity for years to come.

So today let us spare a second to think of all the little ones who are born too soon. Both those who sadly don't make it and the little fighters who do!

8 Weeks Old- All The Things We Never Did

My girls have had another exciting week of firsts. They have started wearing proper clothes and met lots of other twins at twins club (great, but slightly surreal experience felt like I had some sort of visual problem!)
They have also been to the seaside for the first time, which unfortunately for them given their Devonian heritage, happened to be chilly Tynemouth in November! However, they went for lunch in a very trendy bistro to warm up.


I love doing things with Emily and Sophie, we are starting baby massage on Wednesday and we try and do a family day out every week. However, on occasion, it is tinged with the sadness of "what ifs"

I would have loved to have taken my boys to see the sea, Matthew never even went outside.

I would have loved to take them out to meet other babies, show them off and dress them in funky clothes.

We would have all had a great time together and It is just such a shame that we never got to.

Brrrr Tynemouth Beach!

6 Weeks Old- The Ripple Effect

Emily and Sophie are almost 7 weeks old, weigh about 7lb, have grown out of their first set of clothes and are just starting to smile! They are fantastic and are real little miracles.

Funky Bootees- Thanks Swain-Cruz Family and lovely cuddly blanket knitted by Great Granny.

Today I wanted to post about something that had never really occurred to me before. We had a fabulous Sunday lunch today with both my family and Chris' (who are up visiting). Sophie and Emily were surrounded by 2 sets of grandparents, a great granny, great aunt, 2 uncles, an aunty and "Big Cousin Aidan" We had a lovely time (especially now that I can have "pink" roast beef and a glass of wine!) and it got me thinking about something a friend mentioned a few weeks previously.

I met my friend and her identical twin boys for coffee the other week (if you get lots of attention going out with one set of identical twins imagine going out with 2!) She was also a semi permenant resident of Ward 34 and ended up having her boys a little early. We talked a lot about how our little ones were doing but then the talk turned to our respective traumatic pregnancies.

One of the things that we had both realised after our babies arrived safe and well was how people had been worried about us! It had never occurred to me (or her..and her condition was a lot more dangerous than mine) that anything would happen to us, it was all about the babies! I wasn't put off at all by the scary consent forms I had to sign and by the end of my pregnancy with Emily and Sophie I had had so much intervention (injections, internals, scans, drugs, examinations etc, etc that I would have let the hospital staff do absolutely anything to me to make sure that they arrived safely. When I got home I asked Chris if he had worried about me- the answer was "Of Course" but this had genuinly never crossed my mind!

All 4 of mine and Chris' children have been fortunate enough to have a very supportive extended family so here is a HUGE thank you from us for their support in helping us bring Emily and Sophie in to the world and a big sorry for all the worry.. hope we haven't created too many grey hairs!!!