'Can you see what I can see? One, two.' The doctor at the Early Pregnancy Unit turned the monitor around and showed us the screen with two very tiny but very distinct heartbeats. 15 minutes of swearing was followed by me taking the rest of the day off work to walk around the house saying sentences like 'meet the twins' and 'the twins would love to come'.   When the shock had subsided we started to get quite excited at the thought of having two more babies join our family. We were going to be the 1 in 250 pregnancies that delivers twins.

At the 8 week scan we found out the twins were sharing a placenta, which made them identical. Monochorionic Diamniotic: MCDA twins account for 70% of identical twin pregnancies and are higher risk because the twins can share their blood supply (Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome) and/or have unequal access to the placenta making them grow unequally (Selected Intrauterine Growth Restriction). The amazing consultant at the Harris Birthright centre explained it all to me but reassured me these complications only occurred in around 15% of MCDA pregnancies.  15% of 70% of 1 in 250...that's basically no chance, right?

Wrong. At the 16 week scan the jovial mood in the room turned serious. 'I just need to run something past my boss' said the sonographer. We quickly discovered that even at this early stage the twins were suffering from both TTTS and SIUGR. The 'donor'twin was already 30% smaller than the other twin and had next to no amniotic fluid. The other twin was the 'recipient': they had a huge amount of amniotic fluid, which explained my already massive belly, and their heart was under extreme pressure from the excess fluid. We had to act quickly to save them. If we lost one we would lose them both as their systems were so interconnected. 

I was offered laser ablation to my placenta and advised to go home and think about the risks. I told the doctor I didn't need to think about it; I wanted it now. Only afterwards did I discover that the procedure to cauterise the connecting blood vessels in my placenta, effectively creating two placentas, was only available at a small number of hospitals and that couples travelled from all over the UK for the procedure at King's. With a tiny bit of local anaesthetic and the advice that it would 'feel a bit weird' the doctor pierced my womb with a needle through my stomach, inserted a HD camera, and proceeded to laser my placenta like a gory computer game. We saw the foetuses floating around, it was like watching an interesting Attenborough documentary. Then we were told to go home and wait; the procedure often ends in miscarriage and the next 7 days would be critical. Nothing happened and 7 days later we still had 2 heartbeats.

There followed almost weekly scans. We got very familiar with doplars and head circumferences and comparative percentages. We passed all the major milestones with a lot of sleepless nights as my tummy got bigger and bigger. 24 weeks the babies are 'viable'. 28 weeks we had passed the doctor's predictions of when they would arrive, 32 weeks I finished for maternity leave.  

Iris and Juno were delivered at 34 weeks on 19th March at King's College Hospital. The day Boris put the country into lockdown as if there hadn't been enough drama already. Iris was a beefy 5lbs, Juno was a slighter 3lbs. Almost 4 months later we are totally sleep deprived but they are growing into wonderful little women. They wouldn't be here without the care we received and so we're raising funds to provide more research and care to other families. Give us some of your money please.