The Birth

I thought I would hit the ground running and try to get everything that has happened so far on here. As the doctors can't really tell us why we went into labour early it doesn't really help anyone to go into much detail on it. All there is to mention is that they were able to delay the birth for 4 days, the most important of which was the first day where they were able to administer steroids to help the babies lungs develop.

After 2 days of labour we were moved to a better equipped hospital in the north of England in an ambulance, a scary time when you know that the first few moments of your babies life is crucial and they need huge machines to make them stable... Well we made it to the new hospital with what was a day to spare (Phew!)

At the birth we had around 20 medical professionals including Nurses, Midwives, Doctors and Consultants all with the single aim of getting the twins from my Wife's tummy and into a stable condition (which includes putting them into plastic bags to help with keeping them warm).

When the babies are out and after around 5 minutes of near silence (save for whispering and beeping machines) the babies were shown to us before they were wheeled off to be looked after in the neonatal ward. We had been told previously that we would not hear our babies cry before they were taken away, though this made the silence no less worrying. This was one of the most terrifying and emotional experiences of my life!

Our Son Jacob was born first weighing 788grams shortly followed by Lilian who was just 705grams, both of them looking far smaller then any baby either my wife or I have ever seen. We would now start the wait for what seemed like an eternity before we were able to go to the neonatal ward to see our new babies (they had to be prepared for their incubators with all of the lines and tubes needed to keep them alive).

Jacob shortly after the Birth

Lilian Shortly after the birth

That about rounds off the birth of the impatient twins and the start of our beautiful tiny babies new lives in this world.

Introduction

If you are reading this you are likely to be experiencing something similar to what we are going through at the moment, this blog is designed as a way to put down our experiences after our impatient twins decided that they needed to be born early at 25 weeks and 6 days.

This will not have many specific details to ensure the hospitals and our own babies privacy, but we hope that it will be a resource for others going through the same thing and maybe help to reassure/inform you of what lies ahead on your journey as a parent of extremely premature twins.

Our twins are now 5 days old today so we will likely go back over the past few days to give an outline of how this all began, we are unsure of how much this will be used in the coming weeks and months as this (as I am sure you can imagine) is a tough time in our lives, so for now I will leave you with this introduction post.