twins – Five in a bed

The Last Year

The long gap between this and the last blog of just over a year is down to its taken this long to really process what happened to us as a family. It’s a long a twisty ride so strap in and grab a brew and a biscuit or 2!

The Birth

The delivery date was brought forward to perform an emergency caesarean due to increasing pre-eclampsia markers in my wife.

Hindsight is always 20/20 and we were not prepared at all for what happened in the next few hours….

1^st sign was my wife was huge not just twin pregnant huge but huuuuuge.

2^nd Sign was the water breaking and a tsunami being released.

3^rd sign was Twin 2 didn’t cough up his fluid and had to be helped.

I’ll skip the more gory bits for the delicate of mind but if you’ve been at a birth you’ll know.

So back in the recovery room and Twin 1 fed straight away and well, but when we came to feed Twin 2, he very quickly turned blue and started choking.
This was diagnosed by the neonatal paediatrician as a TOF (Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula) and Twin 2 was taken from us and rushed down the M6 to St Mary’s specialist Neonatal unit in Manchester.

I followed him down straight away in my car just stopping to grab a wash bag and a t shirt / underwear, but Mrs S was suffering various effects from the trauma and needed blood transfusions and close monitoring so wasn’t able to come down with twin 1 for 2 more days.

NICU

When in Manchester the team at further diagnosed his problem as a TOF/OA (Tracheo-Oesophageal Fistula, Oesophageal Atresia). To put this simply his stomach was attached to his windpipe & his throat was a dead end. This meant as he was feeding it would just fill the dead end and overflow into his windpipe & lungs.

NB: So going back to Signs 1 & 2 he wasn’t recycling his pre birth waste it was just topping up the bag because he couldn’t swallow. Sign 3 was he couldn’t cough up the liquid in his throat.

The surgical team in Manchester worked miracles and managed to reconnect them together (just). They had to paralyse him for a further 48 hours to prevent him moving and tearing the repair. However it had torn slightly and he was under further observations and interventions that kept him alive while his body tried to heal the tear. Meaning all his breathing and feeding was being done by machines / specialist nursing staff.
Once the leak had self-repaired they were able to start feeding him properly and build his strength up enough to come home 2 months after he went in.

Pete

(Father of 3 with no hair / sanity left)

So, as we come to the end of the journey and the more astute of you will have noticed the title doesn’t say failed in it anymore! After 105 Injections (Another 198 to go still), 749 Tablets, 20+ Appointments, 10 Months & 3 rounds of IVF we did it!

It is very early days but the other half is carrying a couple (yes you read that right!) of new additions to the household.

As journeys go this has been an arduous one for us both, personally it has pushed me close to breaking point emotionally, mentally & financially and is something I hope none of my friends ever has to go through themselves. Without the support of 2 strong families around us I don’t know how we would have made it through these multiple rounds of IVF each one harder than the last.

I seriously don’t know how I would have coped with another failure, I had nothing left to give and was truly drained of all 3.

We did find solace & comfort in the online Facebook IVF groups, but even at times that was hard as more and more people posted their successes as we found only failure.

Even though we only started IVF earlier this year (approximately 10 months ago) it feels like years have passed, with our lives, careers, holidays all on hold. In fact we’ve been together 8 years this year and we’ve only ever been on 2 holidays and one of them was the year after we met & the other was the honeymoon 5 years ago.

Now our IVF journey ends and we begin a new one as a family of 5, now comes the search for bigger cars, house extensions, double buggies, twice as many nappies etc.

The other upside of twins will hopefully be less arguing when picking names & God parents as there is twice as many spaces to fill this time, although the name suggestions Mrs S keeps coming out with I’m sure she’s a closet hippy! She didn’t like the lets name one each suggestion though, mainly because she knows I would pick Thor Oakenshield or Loki Morningstar.

As these kids have already cost us the same as a mid-size family saloon I’m also very tempted to name one Ford & the other Mondeo, but I don’t think she’ll will let me do that either.

I’m very glad this journey has come to an end successfully and we can move on with the rest of our lives. If you have gone through this already I’m sure you can understand what we went through. If you are going through it, I feel for you and I’m here if you need to talk about it. If you’re not, thank whoever you believe in that you’re not.

If you’ve been with me all the way I hope you enjoyed reading the journey, it’s been a useful cathartic output for me and I enjoyed it even if you didn’t. 🙂

If this was your 1^st one please go back and read the 1^st 2 parts as well (Part 1 & Part 2) and I hope you find them enlightening and slightly humorous in parts.

Thanks to everyone who read / commented / supported us along the way, it’s surprising how much a how you doing text or thinking of you both message on Facebook goes.

Most people don’t know what to say and just avoid you altogether, but it’s the closest friends that know it’s just any distraction and the odd how you holding up mate that reminds you that there is people outside the IVF bubble you’re in and that they are concerned but sometimes just scared to ask in case its bad news. The recent scope advert for disability actually had some parallels. (Apart from the introduce yourself bit)

Hopefully other friends who’ve been getting a bit tetchy with me will now understand why I’ve be preoccupied / unavailable for lads nights out this past 12 months, at the end of the day getting Mrs S through this IVF have been priority 1 and any slight hiccup with it, it’s been my job to fix / smooth over / reassure that everything is going to be OK while under the surface panicking like hell myself & trying not to show it.

Right I’m off to stockpile on pallets of nappies & wipes and as I’ve twice as many to buy this time make sure you go out and buy a copy of my new book 50 Shades of Blonde! – 50 Shades of Blonde Book

As I said this is the end of our IVF journey but the beginning of a twin pregnancy, so I may well keep posting updates if anyone’s interested.

Pete

(Father of 1 & Expectant Father of another 2 with very little hair / sanity left)

Tag: twins

Parenthood – Birth & NICU

IVF a Man’s Perspective – A Journeys End