Emily Wright tells her birth story: 'Monday 31st March – I was sitting on our PC talking to a friend online when I got the call of nature. I went into the loo and noticed blood on my sanitary pad. (I had been wearing big pads for a couple of days as I had a fair amount of discharge.)
I came back to the PC and called my mum and mentioned to my friend what I had found. Both told me to call midwife/hospital. I did as I was told, and they told me to come down and see them… but I couldn’t drive down as my husband Kris had taken the automatic car to the station that morning and I couldn’t drive mine as I had sciatica and could not drive a manual!! So I dashed to my neighbour, who kindly offered to come down with me.
We arrived at Hinchingbrooke hospital (Huntingdon) and I was put on a monitor for about an hour. My neighbour, Denise, and I sat and chatted – I don’t either of us thought it was anything to worry about!! I was seen by the registrar and given an internal examination (wow that hurt!) and they said I was to be kept in overnight for observation. I was not best pleased as I hate hospitals!!
The registrar gave me a shot of steroids just in case… Denise left after giving me my bag, and I called Kris and my Mum to let them know. At 6.30pm I went to call Kris to find out where he was (I later discovered he’d forgotten to put his watch forward the day before so had missed his train!).
I got off the bed and felt a whoosh down below. My waters had broken!! I pressed the alarm for the midwife and she came over and confirmed! PANIC STATIONS!! I called Kris and the midwife called both Kris and my Mum.
It turns out what I thought was discharge for the last few days was probably my waters beginning to break!!! Kris arrived soon after and we were told there was no room for the babies in the SCBU at Hinchingbrooke, and the closest hospital was Southend on Sea.
Nightmare – it was over two hours away!
So we waited for about 4 hours on the delivery ward until an ambulance could take me down – by which time I had started to have contractions, so I was given medication to stop them, which unfortunately made me very very sick in the ambulance.
Tuesday 1st April - We arrived at Southend around 12.30am after a very strange ambulance ride – being sick while strapped to a bed in a moving vehicle, while having contractions, is not fun! I was given more medication once in the delivery ward to numb the contractions which let me sleep… which I somehow did, waking up at 3am for the second steroid injection, and then finally waking at around 5.30am.
A registrar came to examine me, and said if they could stop the contractions they would but if not then I would have to have an emergency c-section. The examination showed I was 2cm dilated so there was no turning back given that my waters had broken.
I was wheeled into the operating room at about 11am – having had almost 5 hours of contractions, and having visited the SCBU to see where my babies would be.
I was very emotional and couldn’t stop crying for long periods of time, not from the pain but because I was so worried about my little girls. I think it hit me at this point that this was a serious situation... I think before then I was just excited that they would be born – I had not thought through the implications of having twins 10 weeks early.
The doctors/surgeons had trouble getting my spinal block to work, and took about 20 mins trying to numb me, which was very painful and was made worse by contractions every 5 minutes. Eventually the consultant was able to numb me, and after swallowing some nasty orange stuff (which made me sick!) I was told to lie down, and the screen was put up.
I held Kris’s hand as I began to feel movement (the nurses had to actually tell me they’d started, I thought it was just preparation or something!) and we soon heard a baby’s cry – Amelia had been born at 11:57.
She was brought over to us to see, and then taken away. While this was done, Felicity was brought into the world at 11:58 – she too was crying. They were both ok! Again we saw her, and we kissed them both before they were taken to the SCBU.
I was taken into the recovery room, having been sewn back up, and was sick again (oh, what fun) and Kris went off to call everyone and let them know that our girls had been born and were ok.
We were incredibly lucky and cannot thank the staff of both my hospital in Huntingdon and the Southend University Hospital for delivering our girls safely and nursing them to full health.
They are now 3 months old and are thriving – they are both almost 12lb in weight now.'
