Hmmm - avoid reading this if you are the sensitive, emotional type. I know I get emotional when I read other peoples premmie stories. (Just hit the "quote" button if you want to read it).wombatK wrote:The best laid plans often go astray, and OTOH sometimes things you don't plan work out just great. In our case, twin 2 was a smaller than twin 1, but turned out to be a fighter and made up for that; and we were really lucky that none of the 4 had any serious health issues. Also we did plan successfully to put the cue back in the rack at 4. It's not for everybody, but we haven't regretted it for one moment.
Ours entered the world at 28 weeks 3 days gestation, twin2 had somewhere between a grade 3 (serious) and grade 4 (turn off the life support) brain haemorrhage - which he has managed to get past with almost no issues at all. After the bleed, a blood clot in the ventricles caused hydrocephalus requiring lumbar punctures to relieve pressure but luckily it (partially) cleared before they put a shunt into his brain. Then six weeks later a nurses was bottle feeding the healthy one while TALKING TO SOMEONE, and he stopped breathing and coded - luckily, no brain damage. I didn't get the post traumatic stress disorder until a few weeks later when they rang up and my wife burst into tears - it was only a call to notify us that they had screwed up and given one of our twins breast milk from someone else by accident (cue a stack of blood tests)... but hey, I guess I was close to the edge. The whole time this was happening, I was going through testing which eventually identified that early in my wife's pregnancy I'd lost most of my digestive enzymes from my small intestine which (mainly because I was living off some of my vast quantities of stored flab to the tune of 1kg per week) massively increased my stress hormone levels. Six months to get over the basic PTSD (out of control startle reflex and inability to shut out noise), but I now suffer from depression, lack concentration and motivation - basically, I'm not the person I was before.
BUT - I got to take them home, and there were children in NICU who were doing better than our little one and then died. And I love them to death. Seriously, I wouldn't change a thing... except maybe the whole premmy, brain bleed, PTSD, depression stuff.
Oh, and the source of that accidental breast milk? - about a month after they took their twins home, their house was stormed by the armed response unit who arrested the guy who was sleeping on the floor of their house. He'd been breaking into houses of women and raping them at knifepoint over a six month period.
but there weren't many complaints coming out.
...our twins just make finding spare time bit difficult and a lot of noise... apart from that they haven't even had antibiotics yet...although they were quite comfy in mum's tummy and did everything they could to stay there,was a scary 48 hours in hospital,inducing when one is in breach position is not a good idea 
