I had twins at 33 weeks and then sent 6 weeks on SCBU AMA

[HettySunshine]

Happy to chat about my experience of incubators, dashing doctors and incredible nurses and midwives.

I had twins at 24 weeks and spent 6/13months in NICU and PCCU

Oh my goodness Green! You're an absolute hero! Are they well now?

They are getting there, one has CP but they're both finally off oxygen and starting nursery in September! Thank god for the NHS..

I’m scheduled to have my twins delivered this week due to placenta failing to twin two. They’ll be 32 weeks.

I’m feeling quite terrified about the whole thing. Is it going to be as awful as I imagined? It took me three years and a shitload of fertility treatment to even get pregnant, this feels like another hideous mountain to climb

Lipstick, it's not easy, especially the first few days, but it soon becomes 'normal'. You'll probably be able to stay in hospital for at least a week if you want to and spend loads and loads of time in SCBU with your babies.

Once they're fully stable and settled you'll go home and be able to go in at any time you want every day. I used to go in as soon as I woke up, stay until about 5, then collect my dd1 from nursery and my dh would get there for about 7.30 and spend a few hours with them.

There's obviously no visiting hours for parents and if for example you can't sleep one night you can just jump in the car and go to them.

My dh decided not to take his paternity leave until they came home which worked really well for us.

The most important thing to know I think is that as soon as you walk out of the hospital with them and take them home all the endless days in the unit become a tiny little distant memory. It can feel completely endless when your there, especially when the inevitable set backs happen, but you WILL get out and be able to take them home and within a week it'll seem so long ago.

All the very best to you, I hope everything goes really well.

I had a singleton in NICU at 36 weeks and I’m pregnant with twins now.

I’m just placemarking as I’m nervous about my twins being born early. Glad yours are doing okay now :)

Wow, hats off to you all! My MCDA DTDs were born at 36 weeks and though fairly tiny (3lbs 7 and 4lbs 15), the smaller one only spent 2 weeks in SCBU; we took both home with NG tubes which they duly ripped out before 24 hours had passed!!

Thank you HettySunshine Thats really helpful. My midwife did say I should be able to stay in with them for about a week which would be brilliant. Luckily the unit is very well laid out as well. The place I’ll be staying is right next door to the neo natal unit.

Can I ask how big your twins were when they were delivered and how long they were in hospital altogether? I’m getting a growth scan tomorrow before my consultant decides a plan of action. Also, how did you find getting involved with their care? Especially at first? I know nothing about babies to start with, so the thought of having to change, feed etc such tinies is extremely daunting.

Thank you again for your time. It’s really helpful

Okay, so they were 4ib5 & 4ib7. The bigger baby had no health concerns at all, she didn't need to go into an incubator and was only on SCBU while she learnt to feed and weaned off her ng tube.

The little one, ds, was quite poorly with a condition called congenital hyper insulinism (chi) and had a whole palarva of tests, drips, wires, rushing doctors and yucky procedures. The first few days were really scary, ds was a high dependency baby for the first week so I wasn't able to do much or hold him very often but once they got his chi under control it just became a waiting game for him to learn how to feed too.

Dd2 was in for 5 weeks and ds for 6.

The midwives will show you how to don everything. You can watch them change nappies, measure milk, feed them via their ng tubes and when you feel ready they will help you do it. Don't feel guilty if you need to sleep and miss a round or two. Make the most of having the help. No one expects you to do everything straight away.

You WILL cry. Around about day 3 when your milk comes in your hormones go wild and the stress of the situation makes it worse. It's absolutely fine to have a good old sob and the nurses will have seen it all before.

If you would like to bf, oats are really good for milk production so stock up on flapjacks. When I think back on that time it always has a faint whiff of oats and honey about it! Once again. The midwives will help you out with expressing techniques and show you how the pumps work. Make some room in your freezer so you can store any excess milk when you get home.

Buy some size 0 nappies, pampers do really nice ones but quite a few of the brands do them.

Sorry, I got a bit carried away there!

No need to apologise at all. That’s all really helpful.

It sounds like you had a rough time at the start My biggest fear at the minute is that something will be seriously wrong with one or both of the babies.

I am planning to breastfeed and I absolutely love flapjacks Any excuse to scoff as many of them as possible will be brilliant! I’ve been told midwives will help us with everything, but still can’t help being very nervous about it. I worry they won’t feel like my babies iyswim? The whole situation feels very surreal!

I never even thought about buying nappies. I just assumed they would be supplied, at least at first as atm I don’t know how big they are going to be. I will have to ask.

Had growth scan yesterday and although babies haven’t grown much consultant is happy they are stable for now. She’s said she will try and keep them inside for as long as we can, but that 34 weeks is the absolute longest I’ll be allowed to go. All quite stressful as I was psyched up for them to be delivered this week.

Did you have many friends/family visiting while they were in? How did you handle that if so? Obviously I want mine and DH’s families to see them, but I also don’t want to be having to pander to other people when we’re both likely to be incredibly stressed out.