Obviously the very existence of World Prematurity Day is a wonderful thing. But every November 17 is bittersweet for me. I mean, who can possibly find fault with a global movement aimed at raising awareness of premature birth and the devastating impact it can have on families?
Well, me. Because it forces me to reflect on the worst weeks of my life – the ones when my tiny twin baby boys were fighting for their little lives.
My water broke just 33 weeks into my pregnancy with my twin sons, Harry and Felix, in 2008. Then, as now, they were infuriatingly competitive and desperate to untangle their limbs so they could elbow each other out of the way to tackle the world first.
Of course, with twins, doctors had warned me that it was unlikely I would make it to full term, but the aim was to get me to 38 weeks, which is the stage at which newborns can feed normally and therefore have a stronger chance of survival.
But in July 2008, following a particularly stressful and sweaty trip to a DIY store (we had decided to move house in the middle of all this), Harry’s waters broke unexpectedly. I knew immediately it was too soon. I wasn’t ready, and I was sure the babies weren’t either. I went for a scan but begged the midwives to send me back home.
I pleaded and promised to do nothing more strenuous than lie on the sofa and eat hot crumpets slathered with Marmite. But there was a risk of infection by this point and so I was kept in and labour was induced medically.
Slowly and gradually, over the next agonisingly long three days, my cervix dilated until, in a sudden rush of frenzied activity, there they were. The boys weighed around 3lbs each and I could have held them in the palm of my hand. But I didn’t get the chance to because they were whisked away from us in an instant.
In that heart stopping moment, my husband Dan looked at me with a look of sheer frozen panic, which I am glad to say I have not seen on his face before or since. Should he stay with me, his wife (sobbing and vomiting into my own hair) or follow his new sons to their incubators so we would know where to find them later? “Go!” I shrieked before throwing up again.
The kindly anaesthetist offered to stay with me, but he was not very comforting: “I thought you looked like a puker,” was his helpful observation.
For the next four weeks the boys were in the Neo Natal Unit at St George’s Hospital in South London, kept in womb-like conditions until they grew strong enough to develop their sucking reflexes. As soon as they could feed, the lovely nurses patiently told us every day, we could go home.
Until then they would have to be fed intravenously through nasal tubes, denying me the bonding experience of breastfeeding. Instead I had to pump milk out every few hours. It hurt like hell, in every sense.
Well-meaning family and friends excitedly asked who the boys looked like, but heartbreakingly we had no idea - eye shields, oxygen masks and wires covered their tiny, scrunched-up faces. Visitors, who had to scrub up to their elbows and remove all their jewellery before being allowed to poke a finger through the incubator window, would invariably burst into tears when they saw the boys.
Or they would make spectacularly unhelpful remarks – including but not limited to the following:
“I hope I have a small one!”
No-one plans to have a premature baby, so pregnant women claiming they don’t want to get too big in the hope of an easy delivery is deeply uncool.
“You must be enjoying the peace!”
Every evening the nurses urged me to go home and rest, but my silent house had become the worst place in the world because my babies were born but not home.
“Eww he’s all hairy!”
Premature babies’ bodies are often still covered in a layer of hair, called lanugo, which falls out around the time of their due date. Until then they might look a bit like a guinea pig, but just like unusual hairs in adults, it’s far kinder not to mention it.
Despite the odds being stacked against us, and the piercing shrieks of alarms, the wailing sirens and the constant bleeps of machinery, life in the premature baby ward quickly fell into a daily routine and felt quite normal. It never once occurred to me that the boys might not make it. They would be fine; I repeated to myself during the endless hours I spent staring at their tiny toes in that over-heated room – not wanting to miss the chance for a proper cuddle if it ever came.
I never allowed myself to think the worst because I was too busy coping. It was only later, almost a year later, that I finally cracked and sank into a fog of despair that didn’t really lift for a very long time.
Now, of course, Felix and Harry really are fine. A little bit small for their age maybe, but they eat like a pair of hungry truckers and of course puberty is due any day, so they’ll soon catch up. And achieve their main aim of being taller than me.