I was going to have my normal scan and I remember, remember the day quite vividly. Went to the car park at the local hospital. The, all of the floors were, car parking floors were full so I had to park right at the top floor and, and walk down. So several flights of stairs. Got into the, into the ultrasound room and the sonographer looked on my scan. Well, she was taking too long and by that time I’d had so many scans I could read the scans myself. So I said to her, ‘Is there a problem?’ and she said, ‘No. Well, no, she said, ‘I have to, I can’t comment. I have to get someone more senior. And the first thing I said to her was, ‘Is the cervix open?’ And she said she cannot comment, comment she needs to get someone senior. So a more senior sonographer came in and just said, ‘Well, are you in any pain?’ And I said, ‘No. ‘Do you have any discharge?’ I said ‘No. And then it, she said, ‘Well, your baby is coming. And at that point my whole body just, I just, I just shut down because I couldn’t believe what, what they were saying, the baby was coming.

And how many weeks pregnant were you?

I was twenty-two plus about five days. I just couldn’t believe what, what I was hearing. And because there was no physical sign, no pain, I thought, ‘Oh well, they’ve got it, they’ve got it wrong. So I was told not to move off the, the couch. They got a wheelchair and said, ‘You’re going to have to go into the labour ward. So I said ‘Well, could you call my husband?’ Anyway, they said that because it was so early, you know, that the childs survival is very, very low. And that, that it, to help the baby survive they would have to give me a course of steroid injections to mature the baby’s lungs, but the injections – there would have to be two injections and they have to be twelve hours apart – but they weren’t sure whether I would hang on for the twelve hours. So they had me on a bed with my legs elevated to act against gravity. Luckily I managed to hold out for the twelve hours and got the two steroid injections to mature the baby’s lungs.

They needed to transfer me to a, another local hospital that had a special care baby unit for very, very premature babies, but they weren’t, they weren’t sure whether the undulating of the ambulance would set off the, the labour. Anyway, eventually they did take the chance and I got to the other hospital and within, within a few hours I went into spontaneous labour. And my son just popped out, a vaginal birth. If you blink, if you’d blinked you’d have missed the birth. He just popped out and they scooped him up and took him up, took him away. And funny – I remember sort of seeing his arms just waving in the air and sort of frantically working on him in the corner but he was, he was fine in terms of physically.

Then it was sort of, it was five months of up and down, roller-coaster of emotions in the special care baby unit. After four weeks, after four weeks he developed a blood clot in the hand and lost, lost the hand. Well, the hand, the hand – most people think it was amputated, but it wasn’t. It just died and that, and that came off. And then there were trips up and down Great Ormond Street because of the lungs. Feeding. Eventually he stabilised and we spent as I say five months in the special care baby unit at this local hospital. And my son came out of hospital in, two days – no, sorry, three days after the date, the expected date of delivery. Off oxygen, so he didn’t have to come, he didn’t have to come home with any oxygen, which is very unusual for such a premature baby. But to date he is doing very well.

Yes, I would like to experience differently, because now I’ve seen that it’s not that bad. And as well the big thing, the big wall, the other wall to go through was giving birth in England. That was something very scary for me because I had heard all these scary stories of some friends who are foreigners and who had bad experiences here, or just the usual, you know, difference of culture. And I went through the birth in England and it was not that bad [laugh]. It could have not been better anywhere else, because the care that I received was wonderful. So it just could have not been better in France, so now I’m not scared of giving birth in England or in France or anywhere, because it was not that horrible experience to go through.

When the contractions, when I was free from contractions I was just happy lying there, and they were having this lovely chit chat with me and trying to make me laugh, And the obstetrician was, he had quite a, a very English humour, I must say, and he told me, ‘Oh, you see, well you didn’t need to go to France to have a baby. It’s happening well in here. I thought, ‘Yes, just shut up – I’m hurting. I was thinking, ‘Why is he trying to laugh with me? I’m not in a state to laugh. And he said, ‘Oh, next time please, do it in France, but take me with you because I would love to go again to Paris. And I was thinking, ‘Oh, is that the time to have humour?’ [laugh] But I think actually, you know, that was quite refreshing. And the midwife who was monitoring the heartbeat of the baby, just before he was born she told me, ‘Oh, my God. And she called everybody, ‘Look, just his heartbeat is just like really going for it. Hes going for it, it’s not fading or anything. Because as I understood, sometimes during the baby, when the baby goes through the, the heartbeat slows down. Well apparently mine didn’t. He wanted to go there. He wanted that to happen. So, yeah, there was all the monitoring.

So had you expected or planned to be moving around more, or do you think that’s what you would have done?

I wanted to be moving around more. Well, I did, waiting for the contractions to come. Yeah, I did move around. But I would have liked probably to, to have a different position. Next time I will request it, but when it’s the first baby I think you just, you don’t know what to expect and I was just going with the flow. I was just, they were telling me to do something and I was just doing it because it was simpler. But next time, yes, I will have a different position to give birth.

And how did it feel to have this tiny baby being worked on by a team of doctors and whisked away to special care and?

It took a long, it, I remember it took a long, it took a long time for me to feel attached, attached to the child, because when he was in a special care baby unit in the incubator you, I could put my fingers in in the side and touch him, but it still didn’t seem real. It just, it, I felt as if I was having an out-of-body experience, so I was sort of looking down, looking sort of this situation and I was in the frame, but I wasn’t. And at the back of my mind with all the machines going, I kept thinking maybe, maybe we will lose him, but I just kept praying for him to survive. And it didn’t matter what happened. I just wanted him to survive. And I remember vividly one of the senior nurses coming over to me because at first I wouldn’t touch. I remember I wouldn’t touch him. I wouldn’t touch him and she said, ‘Oh come on, Mummy, you’ve got to’, you know, and she took my, she took my finger and pushed it into, into the incubator, and I remember stroking him and he felt really hairy, just very, very hairy. And he didn’t look, he didn’t look, he didn’t look like a human being. He looked like a little, a little rat, or a little chicken. So I remember that very vividly.

So at what point, I mean, you said that there was then a five month roller-coaster ride. Tell me about that. What were the ups and downs that you lived through?

The ups and downs there I remember not wanting to go to the hospital on my own. So always waiting until my husband, my husband came home from work so that we could go up together, because at the back of my mind I used, I would think, I don’t want, I don’t want to hear bad news on my own. And I remember walking onto the ward and if one of the consultants or the nurses were walking towards me I’d be convinced that they had something horrible to say. You know, something had happened – when in fact they probably were thinking about what they were going to have for lunch, or what they were going to do when they got home. So the, I went through a phase of not wanting to go to the hospital on my own. And then after a while I got over that and I would go up and tend, tend to my son because they, they encouraged you to take part, to take part in the care and the nursing, nursing of the baby. There was also the sense of when you went up the hospital and having to leave, to leave him there, because up until the sort of twenty-two weeks he was inside me and was part of us at home, being involved, and then all of a sudden we always kept having to leave him there. We, our first, yeah, his first Christmas was spent in the special care baby unit and I remember, remember decorating his crib and having lights, and celebrating him making it to Christmas.

Well, as I said I, I went back home twenty-four hours after the birth because I was feeling really well, I was walking about every where. It was heartbreaking to go home without him, and I was feeling a very bad mum for that, but I didn’t want to stay more in the hospital. I wanted just to get on with my moving and my parents coming and, so every day I was doing half an hour trip to go and see my baby for, you know, a few hours or morning or an afternoon or more. And over there they were just very welcoming. It was like you had the hospital and as soon as you entered the special baby care unit, it’s like a sort of home. It’s like, oh, I don’t know, well, yeah, a proper nursery thing. It’s just really welcoming. They greet you, you get all the, the little things that you do. It’s like routine things. You wash your hands. You put your coat there, and you go through there and you see your baby. And when he was better he had his own little room. And when there were seeing us coming with visitors they were coming with chairs, like they did with my parents. I mean, we were all around, you know, standing up, watching the baby, and suddenly very discreetly we looked behind us and there was chairs. And my Dad said, ‘Oh, wow. What was that for? Thank you very much. And it was constantly asking if we needed something. [whispering] ‘If you need something, I’m just over there, ok? Don’t hesitate to call me. And that was like, ‘Oh, yes, wow. I mean, OK, it was not crowded and busy, but I suppose it never gets crowded and busy. It’s probably always a really relaxing place for the babies, but they were just very helpful, nearly part of the family in some aspects. And sometimes I was feeling, ‘Oh, what if my baby likes them more than me because they look after him so much better? I don’t know how to look after a baby, they do’ [laugh].

But it was just so strange atmosphere. You were feeling like in a cocoon, really protected. And I saw, I mean, all the different shifts because my baby stayed twenty days there, so I saw all different people working there. And some of them when I was arriving they were holding either my baby or another baby, and they were cuddling and kissing the babies and talking, you know, little words like, like a mum does. And I thought, ‘Wow. It’s not just a job. It’s more than a job, it’s actually really caring for the babies, whoever they are. And that was surprising. I never realised that people could be so committed. Well, it’s lovely to have a baby, even if the baby’s not yours, it’s just lovely, but they were just so committed. And they talked me through everything, how to bath him, how to breast-feed, everything. They were just there every step – without me even asking sometimes, they were there. They knew probably, you know, what the next step was going to be, so they were telling me first before I was asking. And the day that we left the hospital was heart-breaking, because I wanted to go every day again to see them. I couldn’t [laugh], I had no reasons, but it was like leaving, yeah, a part of the family or friends, and it was nearly tears. And they were like, ‘Oh, so our big boy is leaving now. And one of them actually asked me, she was one of the newest ones. She said, ‘Well, I’ve looked after him for the last two days and a half, can I please go with you to the car park to the car?’ I said, ‘Of course you can. So she, she came downstairs with us. She escorted us to the car, just to say, you know, to stay a bit more with my son and to say goodbye. And so yeah, it was like really family. We went a few times after that to say hello. And each time it was the same atmosphere. You know, it’s like, outside world, and you go through these doors and it’s like oh, a different world completely.

Cos basically he was like premature and he was like he couldn’st breathe properly and he was gone all yellow. And he had like, basically he had to go in an incubator. And they didn’st really, basically as soon as you give birth to him it’s like, well, you had a minute to hold and that’s it. And then he shoot off. And then it’s like two hours later it’s like, Where is everyone? and that. So I’sd say about [Hospital], it was not good at all.

So, so you gave birth at 7 and you didn’st see him till, till 5 in the afternoon?

5 in the afternoon.

And did anybody tell you what was happening in that time?

No. They, they did, they didn’st even see me until 4 o’sclock, when this other midwife come in and said, Right, come on then, Speedy. That’s all she said, Come on, Speedy. Right, we’sll run you a bath, freshen you up. And I said, When can I see my son? She said, Well, when we freshen you up you can see your son. So basically I had a bath, got out quickly [laugh]. And she said Well, that’s not long enough. I said, I want to see my son. And she said, G, you can see your son in a minute. But we’sve got to take some blood out of you as well. I said, Well, you could do that after. And I said, I’m gonna freshen myself up and go and get changed and go and see him. Can I see him now? So I got dressed. And so they showed me where to go. And then me and [husband] went to see him. And he was in this like incubator with like tubes and everything in him and that. And I said, Can I hold him? Like, No, you can’st hold him just yet. I was like, Can I just like touch his hand? Yeah, you can touch his hand. And so they sort of like left us. And basically I started crying because you couldn’st hold your baby. D’syou know what I mean? So then they told me like to go.

So then I was up in the ward like because you have to stay in there for like five days. But j-, then I stay in long, for a bit longer, like fourteen days. So we were like up and down town to town, like fourteen days, like for two weeks like up and down, you know, from town to town. And then eventually I think the best time was, to get him out of there was when he was 35 weeks.

They were reasonable sizes, my daughter was 4lbs 10, my son was 5lbs 10. They spent four days in special care, which was horrid, actually, because it took two days to see a doctor because it was the weekend, and the doctor wasn’t there, and we just thought something was wrong. And it turned out, we saw the doctor, nothing was wrong with them, it’s just they were just short-staffed on the main ward and they didn’t feel they could cope with small twins and support me to breastfeed, so they put me on special care. But it took two days for me to be told that.

When they were born did they not hand them to you and say, ‘You have two healthy babies’?

They showed them to me, they didn’t hand them to me, they showed them to me and then took them away to special care, which was scary. And then I was left in a room, the recovery room place, and my husband was there as well, and the clock was wrong in the recovery room and my husband was moving chairs and standing on it to move the clock, which was by the by. But, and then I was taken up to see them, and then I was taken to the main ward. And then I was incredibly upset because everybody else had a baby and I didn’t have a baby and it was just all, all came back, all over again. And then I cried so much they moved me off the main room and, and put me in my own little room by myself. This is the thing, you have to be really upset and you get your own little room. And I look back and I think, they had my notes, they could have read them, I should have been flagged up as ‘major likelihood of post natal depression’, ‘major likelihood to be upset. But then nobody had read the notes and that has been a recurring theme throughout everything, is nobody reads the notes. And it takes five minutes probably to get a quick overview of a patient, and sometimes they’ll keep you waiting for half an hour but they still won’t actually have read the notes, so. I found a, a midwife who was sympathetic, who made sure that I could get to the ward, but the thing was I’d had a section. I couldn’t, it was a long way to the special care unit and I couldn’t walk that far. I had to get somebody to push me in a wheelchair and I wanted to breastfeed and they were being tube-fed. And it, it just was, it was not a good experience to have them on special care. I wanted to breastfeed. Theoretically they were supportive of that, in practice they weren’t, because it’s not very convenient to have a mum who wants to breastfeed on the special care baby unit. It, it just, I was in the way.

I took it, I took it month by month, and the sort of hurdles that I would, I would aim to get over were the nine months, the thirteen months. So the nine weeks – sorry – the thirteen weeks, the seventeen weeks. When I got to twenty-two weeks I remember becoming very anxious. Not wanting to, not wanting to move, virtually. And just making sure that I wasn’t, didn’t feel stressed or, and nothing was causing me to, undue stress. That the hospital also was scanning on a sort of weekly basis around the twenty-two, twenty-three weeks. But then to compound it I had, had a car accident. Yeah, I had a car accident at almost twenty-three weeks.

Oh no.

And when they scanned the cervix had started to open above the suture and at that point they said, ‘Right you’re going to be in hospital for thirty, for the ten weeks – a month – yeah, ten weeks. And I remember thinking, ‘Oh my God, ten weeks in the hospital just laying on the bed, what am I going to do?’ And then I thought, ‘If that’s the way it’s got to be, that’s the way it’s got to be. So they had me in hospital, permanent bed rest, monitoring, everything, blood pressure, blood analysis scanning, everything. And after ten, eleven weeks and everything was going well they said, you know, you can come out and do a few nights at home.