Things fall apart

Everything started to go wrong from that point forward. The day that I found out I was expecting twins I went from being 'the most healthy, normal pregnancy' on my midwife's book to a high-risk pregnancy.

I did start to panic a bit more. The midwife I was seeing kindly agreed that I could go in to see her more frequently as I was becoming anxious. For the remaining eleven and a bit weeks of my pregnancy, I visited the surgery once every two weeks to listen to the heartbeats. I will never forget the sound. I used to head back into the car park with a grin a mile wide.

I only knew that I was expecting twins for eleven and a half weeks.

I got precisely what I desired. A baby. A baby girl. My heart's secret wish. If I was honest, I wanted a girl. It has an almost fairy-tale like quality to it. You will get your heart's desire but you have to make this Faustian pact. The happiest time of your life will also be the saddest time. You will look at the daughter that you love so much and it will always be just slightly unsettling. Her shadow sister.

At the twenty week scan, the news was not great. One of the girls (as we found out) had a pericardial effusion, a collection of fluid around her heart. I remember crying in the quiet room, where they take the parents who are getting bad news.

We were referred to fetal medicine at a larger hospital. We had two detailed scans. We saw a neonatologist, a paediatric cardiologist. The effusion was small. They saw no cause for concern from the ultrasounds. I was frightened but still certain. Certain that I would be holding both my daughters in a few months time.

But I was wrong. I would never hold my daughters at the same time. Not in my arms.

It was the bank holiday weekend in late August. Things were normal.
One of my dear friends had just come back from a year out in Australia and we met to catch up on news and gossip.
My husband and I had been watching Reading Festival on televison. We are veterans and had been the year before, knowing it would be our last until the 'kids' were old enough to go.
I had arranged to go and meet up with a twin mama friend the next day, to be trained in the mysterious ways of looking after two babies at once. I have to admit I'm still not entirely sure how they do it.

On the Monday evening the backache that I had been nursing all weekend suddenly became worse.

By about midnight I gave up trying to sleep and got in a warm bath which seemed to help. Then I told my husband that I would sleep in the guest bedroom as he had an early start the next day and I didn't want his sleep to be disturbed. I spent the next few hours moving between the bed and the bath. I thought that it might be Braxton Hicks or just a bad back from having such a big belly. By the early hours of the morning, I was dozing off then crawling on to the floor and rolling myself up in a ball, crying with pain. Then the ache would ease and I would get back into bed thinking that it wasn't so bad after all. Eventually I had to concede that something was awry. I'd been hoping that if I could just get off to sleep then, come the morning, everything would be fine. I never put two and two together and realised that I was in labour. As my friend said, 'higher education was wasted on you Catherine.'

By around 4am, I had started bleeding. My husband was awake and he kept saying that we should go to the hospital. I kept arguing as I just didn't want to hear it. I knew that something was going wrong and I was sure that they were going to tell me that I was having a miscarriage. How naive I was, I had no idea what a second trimester miscarriage is like. I thought I would bleed and they would tell me that the babies were gone. Then they would send me home. Actually giving birth never crossed my mind.

I finally admitted defeat and went to accident & emergency. Everything from that point on is a blur.

I remember the doctor telling me that she was going to send me up to the delivery suite but I kept thinking to myself. Why? Why is she sending me there? She told me that I was over 6cm dilated but I still didn't quite grasp it.

I remember the porter pushing me along on a trolley. I remember apologising to him that I was so heavy.

I remember the delivery suite. I was lying on a bed, in a hospital gown. The midwife was telling me what was happening but I just kept saying "it's too soon, they can't be born yet." Just repeating myself. Over and over. And then saying how sorry I was.

They tried to stop the labour. They told me that they were giving me something to stop it and that every hour I could hold on would help the babies. I almost relaxed a bit then because they were saying that there was a possibility of helping the babies and I thought that they would stop the labour. They asked me how far on I was. 23 weeks and four days that morning.

But they couldn't stop it. I had some gas and air as the pain across my back was getting worse and worse. I don't know if I should have had the pain relief. I don't know if I was in enough pain to justify it. I remember hearing the woman in the delivery suite opposite screaming. I felt sorry for her. I felt jealous of her.

I remembering holding my husband's hand. I was apologising to him. Then I would turn and apologise to the midwife. There were a lot of people in the room.

I didn't know what to do. I'd never had a baby before. I'd never even been to an antenatal class. I remember grunting with pain and effort. I'm ashamed of that now. Such little babies, surely it shouldn't have hurt me as much as it did.

One of the nurses gave me a steroid injection for the twin's lungs. That was the only time I yelped. Somehow that seemed to hurt more than the rest.

Georgina Jane was born at 7:08am on the 26th of August weighing 1lb 10oz (around 750 grams) She was born silently but she was alive. They held her up for me to see. I was ecstatic which seems stupid given the circumstances but I was. Completely flooded with happiness, with love. I was going to meet my daughter. She was surrounded by people. A doctor, a young doctor with curly hair. Nurses. Equipment. I couldn't see her from the bed.

Jessica was born at 7:33am on the 26th of August weighing 1lb 7oz (around 670 grams). She was born with a cry. A tiny cry that sounded like a kitten. I didn't see her. She was taken to a table behind me and I couldn't turn around far enough to see her. Her placenta broke and the doctor needed to deal with that so I couldn't move to get to her.

They took both of the babies away. The curly haired doctor came back and told us that there was a slim chance that Jessica might survive but a vanishing chance that Georgina would live. I was amazed, I had assumed that they would both be dead.

I had gone from no babies, to one baby, to two babies, to no babies, to two babies in such a short time frame. My head was spinning. I was taken in a wheelchair to see them in the SCBU.

They were both so beautiful. They were beautiful beyond my ability to tell you just how beautiful they were. It is hard to imagine but that is where we all begin. Every single one of us human beings. We have all been those tiny, delicate creatures. But in a hidden, secret place.

In those tiny, tiny bodies. In fragile shiny skin. With those tiny, skinny limbs. Those thin rib cages. Inhabitated by human beings. Distinct human beings. It seems obvious yet completely incomprehensible at the same time. How could it be? How could it not be? Humans? My children? Of course they were.

Jessica was closest to the door in a white hat. The smaller baby. I rushed to see her as I had missed my chance earlier.

Georgina was in the next incubator to the left. Wearing a pink hat.

I loved them so much. I love them so such. My girls.
It seemed as though something had gone horribly wrong.
It also seemed strangely inevitable. No surprise.
That these would be my children.
These tiny, beautiful beings. Not the babies that I had imagined.

******

And because I said I would at Angie's beautiful blog, Still Life With Circles.

I hereby declare a Catherine W comment amnesty.

If you are fed up with receiving my lengthy comments, often replete with spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, typing glitches and stupidity, do let me know. You can leave a comment here if you wish to humiliate me publicly or you can send me an e-mail if you want to be kind about it.