Special delivery

She held back on heavy lifting, did only low-impact exercise, ate well and generally looked after herself.

“I honestly expected my twin pregnancy to be much harder than it was. It was a textbook pregnancy. Our boys grew well from the beginning and I was convinced the doctors would have to induce me.

“Of course, my husband Jon was less naïve than I was and he organised for us to attend a workshop for multiple parents, which included a talk on premature birth, by The Multiple Birth Association. The speaker had had triplets that weighed around 500g at birth. The talk was unsettling, but I was still convinced that our boys would be inside until at least 37 weeks.

“Suddenly at 33 weeks, we found out that my placenta had started to calcify and one of the babies was not getting the nutrients it needed to grow. I was promptly put on bed rest and my doctor started to scan every two days. The nurses kept asking me if I could feel contractions, but I felt nothing.”

The rest seemed to help and the baby started growing again. But the calcification worsened.

“Jon, ever-practical, made sure my bags were packed and ready, in case we delivered earlier than expected. Thanks to our registration with Discovery’s Vitality Baby, the two goodie bags we received meant that we didn’t need to buy many of the items we needed for our hospital stay. During one of the heartbeat scans, he asked the nurse if we could have a tour of the neonatal ICU, which she arranged for us.”

“This was an eye opening experience and I would recommend it for anyone expecting twins. Seeing the NICU helped us understand all the wires, boxes, beeps and lights in an objective way. We saw how small babies can be born and still survive, for example there was a little girl there who weighed just 600g and was doing well.”

“At 35 weeks exactly, at my latest scan, my doctor did not look happy. He announced that one of the babies now had an umbilical cord wrapped around his neck. He immediately scheduled us for an emergency C-section at Sandton Medi Clinic. My boys, Alexander and Dylan, were born on 21 May 2012, weighing 2.1kg and 2.4kg.”

“It was only eight hours later that I got to see my babies’ faces properly for the first time. They were in NICU for 10 days and it was the hardest time of my life. Despite their healthy weights and the fact that they had reached 35 weeks inside, they were considered premature because they didn’t have a sucking reflex yet. They had to learn to suck before they could be sent home. They were also slightly jaundiced and had to spend quite some time under the lamps. It was a very frustrating time. They were tube-fed formula and I couldn’t breastfeed. I believe not being able to breastfeed them there impacted my milk supply, because even though I took something to help boost supply, I never produced enough to even feed one of them.

“One thing we did not have to worry about was whether their NICU stay would be paid for. As a Comprehensive Plan Discovery member, both my boys were fully covered for their entire stay at the hospital.

“The time in ICU wasn’t just hard, it was also rewarding. The nurses put them on a schedule and we learned all the things new parents need to know, from bathing, nappies and other things that many women only get three days of nursing help for.

“My boys will be turning one soon and they have without doubt caught up with their birth ages. They are an absolute blessing and despite the difficult start, I wouldn’t trade it for the world.”