Just 24 short hours later, Hakeem’s water broke. I gave birth to and lost my baby girl on the Sunday and my husband, her dad, was busy making her funeral arrangements for the Tuesday. My cervix closed shut, as there were no contractions, so the consultant did an emergency procedure where he left Rayna’s placenta in my womb as not to disrupt Hakeem’s bubble. Her brother, Hakeem, didn’t end up coming. I watched her little wriggles and tiny breaths – and when she passed, she looked so peaceful. She was alive for 36 minutes, being cuddled and comforted by her parents. My sweet darling girl, Rayna, arrived at 22weeks+1, weighing just 400g. She came out naturally and didn’t cause me any pain or struggle. My husband came for his 1-hour hospital visit and what I thought was a mad rush for a wee turned out to be when I delivered my baby girl. 3 January 2021 will be the day I will never forget Those first days in hospital didn’t seem so bleak as I could feel my babies kick and I could listen to their heartbeats it was so reassuring to know that we were a team, trying to push to 23 weeks. We agreed with neonatal support that we didn’t want any intervention until 23 weeks, because the viability at 22 weeks with twin pregnancy was very slim and we didn’t want to cause them any pain. However, with all the excitement came the shocking news that the sonographer could not find my little girl’s head she was head down fully engaged in my cervix, which explained all the pelvic pressure I’d been feeling.Ĭonsultants told me to wait and see, but prescribed antibiotics to reduce the risk of infection. We’d been looking forward to 23 December for a very long time: our babies’ 20-week scan, where we’d get to find out their sex, and learned that we were having a girl and a boy.

The thought of buying more days to keep my babies alive seemed like such a daunting task.

I had tough conversations with the obstetrician and neonatal ICU team about PPROM, when they told me that if the babies were to come out at this stage their chance of survival would be very low, and that doctors wouldn’t be able to intervene until we reached 22/23 weeks. I was kept on the ward for monitoring and the next few days were horrible. At 20 weeks pregnant with my twins, I went to the Maternity Assessment Unit to get a peculiar discharge checked out, and doctors found that my cervix was 2cm dilated and I had bulging membranes with traces of leaking amniotic fluid.

Lost twins