Story

Tubes and monitors surrounded him. I felt so desperate to protect him. All I kept thinking was that I did this, my body let him down. The guilt weighed heavily on me, but I knew deep down it was not my fault.

From the moment our journey began, I made a promise to myself: to raise funds and awareness for the charities that supported us. Among these, Ickle Pickles played a crucial role.

I just wanted to say how enormously honoured and proud I am to be named an Ambassador for the Ickle Pickles Children’s Charity!

The doctor told us that our twins had no chance of survival. Viability is 24 weeks gestation and I was only 22 weeks + 2 days.

For the first few weeks of her life, I could not hold my baby; I could not feed my baby; I felt like we were in a living nightmare.

They gave the twins a 0% chance of survival and we discussed ‘comfort care’ which basically means no medical intervention. This was unthinkable to me.

We were delighted and nervous to be having more than one baby. However, we quickly became aware of the complications of twin pregnancy and were diagnosed with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome at 16 weeks

She spent 41 days on a ventilator and it was five weeks before I could have my first cuddle with her.

I was told that it would be likely that I would have to deliver our baby in the coming days. If we were really lucky, we would make it to 30 weeks, but they needed to find me a bed in a hospital with a level 3 neonatal unit.

Our NICU story begins with the birth of our first son, Charlie, in March 2008. I found myself in premature labour at just 28 weeks and 2 days.