Janie went to the Royal Free Hospital for a fortnightly checkup on Tuesday 27th October 1998 (she had already spent five days in Pre-Natal for observation because of indications of pre-eclampsia). The results of the previous Sunday's blood test showed her toxicity levels had gone up significantly and it was decided she should be re-admitted . Luckily we had packed a bag.

On Thursday (29th October) Janie phoned me at work to say she had seen one of our consultants, and they were preparing to go ahead with an emergency caesarean at any time. Could I get to the hospital at half an hour's notice if they called me later that day. A little later she called back to say the plan had changed and that we were booked in for a c-section the next day (Friday 30th October) at 1.00pm. This is at 31 weeks 3 days - nine weeks premature and probably seven weeks earlier than we had planned. I cancelled everything at work on Friday and turned up at 9.00am ready to go.

We got down to the Labour Ward at 1.00pm and from there went in to the theatre where the birth was to take place. They put the spinal block and epidural in and everything went quite smoothly, Emma and Lucy (non-identical twins) officially being born on Friday 30th October at 2:45pm (Emma - 1454g) and 2:47pm (Lucy - 1460g). The anaesthetist lowered the chest screen so that we could witness them entering the world - an experience that neither of us will ever forget. Emma cried immediately, which was a good sign, Lucy was quieter but started up when they got her to the resuscitaire. I was able to move around the theatre and see everything that was going on. Janie only got a brief glimpse of the babies before they were taken down to the Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU). The surgeon then proceeded to stitch Janie up. A complication arose with one of the placentae which had bedded very deeply in the womb lining and had gone through to the muscle wall. This meant they had to do a repair job to re-build the womb lining (so far this doesn't seem to have been a major problem but could become one if we wanted to have more children). The stitch-up took far longer than anticipated and I'm sure Janie became more tired than she would otherwise have been - this may or may not be relevant to the rest of the story...

Once she was stitched up, Janie was taken out of the theatre and into a delivery room for recovery. Knowing that she would be grounded by the anaesthetic I had brought along a camcorder and was able to go down to SCBU and record the babies for her at about an hour old. Janie rested for much of the remainder of Friday and when I left her in the evening she was beginning to pick up, she may even have been eating hospital food.

I returned to the hospital on Saturday morning. Janie had had a disturbed night. Doctors and nurses had been constantly buzzing around her because of her condition (high blood pressure, high toxicity levels, loss of blood, etc.) and I was a bit shocked to find they had put in a second "line" into her neck for loading her up with fluids. But she was eating and drinking, and in the afternoon was able to go down to SCBU to be with Emma and Lucy for the first time. I stayed around the hospital most of the day and went home at about 9.00pm. Everything seemed to be going to plan...

At 11.30 that night (Saturday) there was a knock on the front door and two policeman suggested I should call the hospital... I rang in and spoke to the consultant, who said that Janie wanted me to come back, that it looked like she had had a stroke. I drove back to the hospital not knowing quite what to expect. When I arrived I found her lying there, practically sightless, with her left arm paralysed by her side and wearing an oxygen mask to help her laboured breathing. She had had a dizzy spell when she'd got up to go to the toilet and had suddenly lost her sight. Luckily she had been able to call for help but I think she was unconscious when it arrived. Understandably she was terrified because she had no idea what had happened, and neither had anyone else.

Throughout the night Janie lay there, fighting for breath, scouring the room for light. I sat up with her as a steady stream of medics - obstetricians, neurologists, heart and lung specialists - came through the door. She had a brain scan to look for clots, she had constant heart-rate, blood pressure, and blood oxygen saturation monitoring, they gave her anti-coagulants to help thin her blood which caused her to lose yet more blood from her wounds. On Sunday morning they transferred her to the Cardiac Care Unit because they were worried her heart or lungs may have been at risk.

During the course of Sunday she gradually began to improve. Her arm began to get some life into it and she slowly started to recognise movement and shapes until by Sunday evening she could see faces and expressions. She stayed on the Cardiac Ward that night and on Monday morning was returned to Labour Ward. By this time most, if not all of her sight had come back and her breathing was improving. Her arm, while a little slow and heavy, was returning to normal. But still no-one had been able to come up with solid reasons for the event, so we were both scared that it could happen again. She had some more tests, including a chest scan using radioactive isotopes, and was allocated an intensive care nurse - the hospital was also treating her situation very seriously. I stayed with her again through Monday night and most of Tuesday and gradually they started freeing her up from all the monitoring, fluid lines, catheter, drain bag, etc. They ran several more tests but still couldn't find any evidence which would give a definitive answer...

And they still haven't. The current thinking seems to be that it was a thrombosis which temporarily blocked off part of the brain - though there is talk that it could have been an eclamptic fit... We can only hope that whatever it was, it was a one-off incident and as she moves away from the pre-eclampsia, the operation and the pregnancy the risks of a repeat will be minimised.

During all of this Emma and Lucy were safely in incubators in SCBU. Janie wasn't able to get back down there until Tuesday 3rd October (for only the second time in five days) although I had been making regular visits to be with them and report back.

Now a week later, with Janie much better and back on her feet we can begin to concentrate on our parenting responsibilities. Being so premature, the babies haven't yet got the full sucking reflex but Janie's expressing milk which is fed to them through a tube which they seem to be thriving on. They are both breathing without assistance and are now only attached to heart rate monitors. They're out of incubators and in the main SCBU room, but they're still tiny and in need of constant attention. We won't be able to bring them home until probably mid-December. Until then they will be strangely "unborn" with the SBCU providing a womb for them until they are up to gestational age.

We all seem to have survived it intact. It really has been the toughest time of our lives, but Janie's getting stronger (although she tires quickly) and Emma and Lucy are progressing nicely. I just about got through it without my head exploding. The plan for this month is rest and preparation for bringing them home, hopefully before Christmas.

Nick Kiey - 8th November 1998