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I first found out i was pregnant at around 4 weeks pregnant. I knew straight away what was going on when i was feeling sick and turned off my regular morning coffee. My partner and I were so surprised! Considering i was meant to be getting tested for PCOS as my periods had become irregular. When i first found out about PCOS i did some research and of course the scariest thing stuck with me- future problems with infertility. I really took it to heart and was so scared and convinced i wouldnt be able to have children in the future as my dr had convinced me that was the issue. I did a pregnancy test and sure enough 2 lines, extremely faint but 2 lines!!! My partner and i were over the moon! But from the beginning i had this nagging feeling in the back of my head that it wasn’t going to be an easy path. I had my first scan at 6 weeks pregnant, i just couldnt wait any longer! I just wanted that reassurance of seeing a lil blob on the screen and sure enough there it was, heart fluttering along nicely. It was the best feeling in the world!! My morning sickness was pretty shocking, never any vomiting but extreme nausea that just stayed with be 24/7 to the point i would just want to sleep all day! Finally the day of my 12 week scan arrived! As i lay down and pulled my shirt up and the ultrasound probe ran across my stomach, the sonographer said “did they tell you anything special about this pregnancy” the worst straight away ran through my mind, than much to my partners and I surprise she said “there is twins” We were wondering how on earth it was possible! There was no history of twins in either of our family, i was only 19 and all u could think was we are going to have to cancel the layby at target and get a double pram instead! As soon as we left i called my mum who was in tears and so excited! Than the phone calls started coming in left, right and centre! How exciting, twins in the family!!! 3 hours later i went to go to the bathroom and wiped to find blood.. My heart dropped and everything started spinning. I rushed straight away to the ER to be told it was probably just some normal spotting and to come back if it got more. I went home with that feeling still nagging in the back of my head, but tried to push it aside and rest up. At 3am i went to the bathroom to find more blood.. straight back to the emergency room and into one of the rooms while waiting for the dr, i felt a gush as what i can only explain would be like your waters breaking.. i yelled for my partner to get a dr and my worst fear was confirmed, threatened miscarriage.. I couldn’t believe it all i could think about was how i was over 12 weeks and how unfair it was. I was booked in for an ultrasound in a few hours and was given morphine for the pain and a drip of fluids. It felt like the longest few hours ever and finally she started scanning me. I held my breath until she finally said and there is 2 heartbeats. I thanked god everything was okay, but knew it was just the beginning. They diganosed me with a subchorionic hematoma which is basically a blood clot in the uterus. It wasn’t over the cervix and it wasn’t behind the placenta, plus it was a reasonable size so they weren’t overly worried. They said it could go a few ways. It could come out with the babies when they were born, it could resolve itself, it could bleed out or it could cause miscarriage. I was just so appreciative that my little darlings were hanging in there! After waiting at the hospital all day to go home finally a nurse came in only to tell me they found something abnormal on my scan but i would have to wait for the gyno to tell me what it was and she wasn’t available. I couldnt believe it! how could they just throw that on me and than not tell me what the problem was! Feeling overwhelmed i had to lay back down. We booked an appt to see the gyno and went home. As soon as i walked in the door i went to the toilet and clots just gushed out. I couldn’t stop crying, what kind of a sick joke is this i kept thinking! First it was okay, than something bad happened, than it was okay, than something bad happened. Again back to the hospital!! they kept me in overnight this time thinking that i would more than likely need an emergency d&c. After 7 attempts they finally got a canula in.All i wanted was my mum, but staying in emergency i wasn’t allowed anyone with me. I kept begging for an ultrasound to check if it was my babies that had passed, but they kept refusing.. I took matters into my own hands and found a really good gp who was a high risk ob and actually specialized in twins! and was booked in for an ultrasound at 13 weeks and found out what the hospital wouldnt tell me was that i had a very high risk for downsyndrome at 1 in 15 for both babies. I didn’t know a lot about it, but all i could think was whatever happens happens. I wasn’t fighting so hard for my babies for no reason!

Much to my relief when i had the 12 week scan there were no factors for downsyndrome and no sign of the clot! I refused amniocentesis. And was told to rest and do nothing ! so everyday i laid in bed doing nothing but reading or facebook. I was so hard both mentally and physically. At the same time i was pregnant so were 4 close family members and they were having the time of their lives baby shopping,etc while i was just hoping the bleeding didn’t return.

At 20 weeks i all of a sudden “popped” out.. Thinking it was just a twin thing i mentioned it in passing to my dr, who straight away checked my fundal height. 36 week size and only 20 weeks pregnant, which even for twins was too much. He sent me to my local hospital who refused to do further testing and just said “its normal” again that nagging feeling was there, so i organized my own ultrasound for the very next day. It was only a few days until Christmas so i was lucky to get in! The found i had twin to twin transfusion syndrome, which is where the babies share their blood supply and can be very dangerous. If both twins don’t die (90% chance of that happening) they can develop severe brain and heart defects. I couldn’t believe my luck.. I was referred to a hospital 2 hours away for monitoring and it came to the decision they would just keep an eye on me. I was kept in over Christmas which i spent alone as i didn’t want my family driving at peak hour. After weekly checkups they found at 24 weeks i had a shortened and funneling cervix (2.7cm) and i also had Taps (blood flow issues) as well as the usual Tops (fluid issues) which required immediate life saving surgery and it was only by a pure fluke that they discovered it. The operation went fine, but i was told there was a high chance i would be in preterm labour within 4 weeks after the operation and i was put on strict bedrest at home.

After 2 weeks of bedrest and taking each day as it came i was 26+1 and knew something wasn’t right. I went to my local hospital and i was 6cm dilated. It was too late to stop labour! My baby girls would be here.. i was so emotional and so terrified. They couldn’t move me to a hospital 2 hours away that delivered prems because they were scared id deliver on the way there, so instead i was given tablets to stop labour in the hope to slow it down and steroids for their lungs to help them develop. The Mater staff travelled down to me and 8 hours later i was in having an emergency csection (after 8 hours of labour up to 9cm and wanting to push. Allergic to the medication they gave me, high temperature and swollen face, hanging upside down on the bed to try and keep the babies in and just feeling like crap) the babies heart rates started to drop dramatically which was the need for the emergency csection. Than they delivered my girls and i only heard one cry.. They were having trouble resuscitating one of my girls and all the drs were rushing to one of them (jasmine) i couldn’t look. I just wanted to touch my little girls and tell them it would be okay and mummy was there for them. Even though it was my bigger baby jasmine (940 grams -2lb1oz) that was in trouble, i just couldn’t get it out of my head that something was wrong with Sienna (860 grams 1lb 12 oz) i just had an overpowering urge to protect my girls, but could do nothing i was helpless.

As they were leaving the room the nurse said to me, look mum shes waving and i looked across to see my little sienna wave her arm and my heart caught in my throat, i knew straight away why.. They took the girls to a hospital 2 hours away after i saw them for 5 minutes and went to recovery. It was so hard, it felt like i had lost them and to add insult to injury they put me in a room full of mums who had just delivered healthy term babies, whinging about not getting enough sleep or their breasts being too big making it hard to feed.. It also didn’t help i had a horrible midwife who blamed me for having my babies at the hospital and making things “too busy”. I cried myself to sleep and just kept hoping and praying my girls would be alright. Begging god that they would be okay.

The next day came around and i was allowed to go to the hospital via ambulance with my partner. We got there and i was so excited to see my girls, i had been calling all morning getting updates and were told their chance of survival was 80%, i kept thinking you have made it through so much, please keep fighting! But than i got a phone call.. my precious little sienna was going downhill and fast. She had the worst brain bleed possible and she was having seisures that couldn’t be controlled. Her heartrate wouldnt stay down which signifies pain and she was on morphine and other pain killers so they couldnt give her anymore pain relief. I kept thinking, you read about miracles all the time where they pull through. Not my little girl, i won’t let her go. Than i saw her. She was so sickly and purple from all the bleeding, she was skin and bones just the size of my hand and she kept trying to open her eyes up and look at mummy. Still i stayed positive telling her mummy would be here for her and i wasn’t going to give up. Than more results came back a few hours later and she was getting worse. They wanted to start sticking tubes into her lungs to drain the bleeding but chances where she would die as she only had a 1% chance of living. So the decision was ours, do we give her cuddles or do we let her die being poked and prodded, all she had felt for the first 2 days of her life.. We decided to let her pass peacefully and with those who loved her most. Out of the isolette came this tiny fragile baby disappearing in a big bundle of blankets. She was baptised before she passed and clung tightly onto mummys finger and the last thing she did was wave. I truly believe she hung on just for us and to let us know it was going to be okay. It was like she was waiting for me to come to terms with it to let her go. It was beyond the hardest thing i ever had to do. 15 months later and i still cry myself to sleep some nights just wishing my little girl was here. I don’t think il ever regain that piece of my heart that was lost that day, but i know she was the main reason for my gorgeous jasmine pulling through and having a non eventful NICU stay and coming out a strong healthy baby who exceeded all the drs expectations. I am now 27+5 weeks pregnant with a baby boy and im expected to carry to term. And i know now that both my children have a precious guardian angel watching over them both.

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Posted by alyssajh5, 20th April 2013