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Hello everybody.

Last year my wife Vicky and I found out we were pregnant, we were both over the moon as we have always wanted children and couldn't believe we had been so lucky so soon after our wedding. 10 weeks later we had a scare and raced to hospital for an emergency scan fearing the worst. Shortly after the scan had begun we were told we were expecting twins! We were shocked and very excited, however after being handed a piece of paper explaining the potential risks of expecting identical twins we were also aware we had a long journey ahead of us. 2 weeks later we had our 12 week scan and we got to see our babies for the first time and we were blown away. We had to wait for a month to see our beautiful babies on the screen again and we got to see them kicking and wriggling around like crazy! We now had to have scans every 2 weeks to check on their progress and also to spot any early signs of the dreaded TTTS. Unfortunately on our 18 week scan our nightmare was about to begin. After 20 minutes with the specialist we were told that our babies were suffering from twin to twin transfusion syndrome (TTTS). Only identical twins suffer from this. Our babies shared a placenta and the blood flow passes from one baby to the other baby. TTTS happens when there are too many blood connections in one direction, causing an unequal flow of blood between the twins. One twin may receive too much blood and become overloaded with fluid, which puts a strain on the heart. This twin then squashes the smaller twin against the wall of the uterus (womb). The smaller twin then receives too little blood and doesn't grow well. The baby receiving too much blood will try to get rid of the excess of fluid by producing more urine. As a result, she will have too much amniotic fluid around her, while her twin will have little or none. If not treated there is a high chance that both babies will not survive. Two days later we were in Birmingham women's hospital where Vicky was to have laser treatment to separate the twins blood flow to allow the twins to grow independently. After an hour in theatre the surgeon deemed the operation a success and we were aloud home a day later. The following week we were back in Exeter for a follow up scan hoping all would be ok and our babies were improving. Unfortunately for us that wasn't the case and it looked as though the operation hadn't been successful. we were heartbroken and Vicky's tummy had began to swell again. A week later and we were on our way to Birmingham once more for another operation to save our babies, unfortunately 20 minutes before the planned op Vicky's waters broke due to excess pressure, we were told that she would now have to give birth to our babies with no chance of survival as their fragile little lungs weren't strong enough to survive out of the womb. We made the journey back to Exeter and Vicky gave birth to our Beautiful baby Rose on 25-3-16 at 21:46 and roughly 2 hours later at 12:02 the next morning on 26-3-16 our beautiful baby Angel was born. They were absolutely perfect and we spent the next couple days holding and just staring at them completely in love but also completely heartbroken. We will never forget Rose and Angel and our aim is to do as much charity work as possible so we can help experts find new ways to treat this devastating disease and hope that nobody else has to go through what we have. Thanks for reading our story and any donations you make will be very much appreciated.

Matt and Vicky

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