Outside of our front door of our home is an old light, which has a glowing lightbulb inside of a glass-walled holder. I look at it at night and think it glows, as the light seems to be suspended by nothing. For 5 days now, I’ve had a glow inside of me just like our front door. You probably can’t see it. Nobody needs to, I just know it’s there.
My last antenatal visit on Tuesday didn’t exactly go as planned. After getting scanned by a technician who was clearly more interested in scanning my intestines than actually scanning the babies (as judged by the ferocity with which she kept pushing down. The babies hated her. I hated her, too.), I headed in to meet the consultant.
I had prepared myself for “You need 2 more weeks at least”.
I was not prepared for “You need to deliver, and soon.”
They let me go home to pick up a few things, then I was admitted on the antenatal ward. Random thoughts kept occurring to me: Where did I put those baby blankets? What clothes should I take? Maybe we should have lasagna for dinner. I wonder if the babies are coming.
I was admitted to the pinnacle of luxury in these hospitals-a private room with its own shower and toilet-and I settled in. I gave a blood sample. They took my blood pressure, which was reaching new highs on an hourly basis. I was just walking Angus to the door at the end of visiting hours when the midwife stopped us, and asked him to come back to the room-my blood results were in. I was finally pre-eclamptic. My kidney function showed the worst levels the midwife had ever seen, basically my kidneys had packed up and gone to the bar and was going to leave my body to the rest of it. The liver, fortunately, was holding the fort. But I was not healthy, not at all.
That night they finally gave me a sleeping tablet after I re-enacted a scene from a junkie film in front of the midwives station. I didn’t care that I was practically begging for narcotics-I hadn’t slept for days and I knew that no sleep would be coming. I was right about that-my little breakdown scene happened at 2 am, and they drugged me and gave me 5 hours of peace.
The next morning Angus turned up very early. We waited. We wondered. When I finally blew a 170/115 on the blood pressure monitor, it was action time.
On Wednesday, the 3rd of October at 1500, I was walked across the corridor to the operating theatres (that’s what they’re called here-in our hospital it looked like one massive warehouse with side operating rooms all full of equipment, it was very surreal), where a massive team stood by waiting to take care of me and the twins. The babies’ song was in my head the entire time on a loop, a reminder, a prayer.
Angus was put into scrubs and strange gardening clogs, as though the type of work he was headed for was agricultural instead of emotional. I was put into the glamorous hospital gowns and settled into surgical stockings. The operating theatre was absolutely enormous. I was wheeled into a pre-room for my epidural, which went without a hitch even though both Angus and I were terrified. I had asked the anesthesiologist beforehand if he’d had a boozy lunch. Luckily, he laughed.
And then it was time.
The theatre was very bright and white. I was strapped to a table and can only tell you the basics-Angus says there were many people in the room, as delivering premature twins is a risky thing. There were apparently rows of surgical kit ready to go. A whiteboard identified each member of the team and what each person should do. Two teams stood by ready to take our babies. Three doctors were going to work on me, and the very nice anesthesiologist stood by my side the entire time (what’s up with anesthesiologists always being marathon racers? I’m just saying.)
They asked if we wouldn’t mind if they put on some music. Angus and I, both scared out of our minds, said no we didn’t mind. They asked what we’d like to listen to.
Without missing a beat, we both responded, “Whale song.”
The staff looked queasy.
We laughed and told them we were kidding.
The staff laughed hesitantly and said they did have a whale song CD, if that’s what we really wanted.
We told them under no circumstances would our babies be born to Moby Dick, so please choose whatever you’d like.
Relieved, the staff did. And due to that, our babies were born at 15:54 (Nick) and 15:56 (Nora) to Sheryl Crow’s “All I Wanna Do is Have Some Fun”, and if that’s not irony then I don’t know what is.
I don’t remember a whole lot. I remember being completely numb from the breasts down, but feeling tremendous pulling sensations, like someone was reaching in to take my heart out. In some ways, that’s exactly what they did. We laughed and joked and the anesthesiologist tried to keep us light and upbeat, and without warning we heard a whimper. Then silence. Then a cry. Then more cries. And Angus – who had spent the time “north of the curtain”, as per both of our wishes, was called over to assist in cleaning and documenting our son and daughter, and the tears fell silently down the sides of my eyes and into my hair as I listened to the sounds of our children. Angus came over with them swaddled in white towels, vernix shiny on their heads and both expressions on their faces one of wrinkly raisin horror. Angus’ face was amazing-he was lit up like Christmas and his grin split his face.
I don’t remember a lot else after that – it should have been all exciting and charged up, but I lost a great deal of blood (2.5 times what you should lose in a C-section), and that combined with a general lack of sleep, my adrenaline coming down, and my blood pressure zooming back to earth meant I crashed hard. I was asleep and unable to stay awake, so I have to say-I slept through recovery and some of the early moments of the babies. I look back at some of the video Angus took of me meeting the babies, of me being wheeled into recovery with a baby tucked under each arm and a dopey smile on my face, and I remember none of it.
It hasn’t been easy. I had a reaction to the anesthetic and so spent my time itching furiously until they gave me medication to stop it. My blood pressure is still slightly high for me, but basically nearly back to normal. My stomach is shrinking as my uterus does. I’ve had a headache for days. But as I’d had a C-section, twins, and pre-eclampsia I got a lot of help in the hospital, so the first night the midwives came in and fed her and Nick, but halfway through the night Nick’s stats were getting worse, so a pediatrician shook me awake to tell me that Nick wouldn’t be coming back to the ward.
The C-section was hard but necessary, although both the traumatic nature of Nick’s birth combined with his sister sitting on him and his premature status meant that he earned himself a ticket to special care baby unit (like the NICU here). His sister Nora, weighing 6 ounces more than he, is healthy and happy, but the first night Nick proved he couldn’t feed and couldn’t suck properly, and that combined with the fact that his body looks Starvation Chic (baby fat appears in the last few weeks of gestation, which both babies missed) means he couldn’t control his body temp and blood sugars. He was fitted with a feeding tube, and on Thursday they wheeled me in to see him.
I was really weak and useless, unable to pick him up. He lay there, draped with blankets and on heating cushions, surrounded by babies in stages I remembered-29 weeks. 32 weeks. 30 weeks. I couldn’t stay awake while being with him, which made me feel horrible, and halfway through my visit blood started pouring out of me, past the catheter and onto the sterile floor, which made me feel even worse. They rushed me back to ward, where I stayed bed-bound. I missed the presence of Nick, so calm, so assuring.
Nora and I spent the first real night alone. I insisted on feeding her myself and I’d haul myself up to her level when it was time. Nora is a soft, quiet, gentle baby. She is disconcerting to me because I see myself in her face, in the shape of her cheeks. She loves nothing more than to be fed and to have a cuddle with her face wrapped in the soft of your neck. She is a loving lump, and I in turn absolutely adore her. She rarely fusses and almost never cries, but as a function of being a preemie she is extraordinarily sensitive to touch – the fat stores infants develop in the latter weeks not only plump and warm, but they also protect the nerve endings. Right now many of Nora’s nerves end too close to the skin, so when you touch her it has to be firm and sure and with pressure, as incidental stroking is currently too much for her to bear, it’s too sensitive for her, it’s too intense.
I know how that feels.
Nick had a feeding tube for days, up until the point he’d decided he’d had enough of the feeding tube, at which point he removed his entire feeding tube himself and thus got to join Nora and I on the ward. His determination to remove his feeding tube amused and exasperated us, and both Angus and I see ourselves in his defiance. Nick is tiny. He opens his eyes a lot more than Nora does and takes in the world a lot, even though he can’t see much at all. He too is sensitive to touch, and he makes the most ridiculous faces. He’s a very colicky baby but he loves to be stuck to your skin, holding on, taking it all in. I can’t explain it, but I love him differently than I love Nora, just as much but differently, and I love them both with such an intensity that it frightens and humbles me.
It’s true what they say. I thought it was rubbish, I thought it was old-wives tales. But it’s not. You fall in love with your child, and it happens without you even noticing.
My pregnancy was the worst experience of my life. Arguments, worry, bleeding, fear, hospital stays, needles, blood pressure, kidneys, bladder, more bleeding, breathing, emergency C-sections, the sight of my boy in special care…it was a living hell. And if I only ever got one moment with these two babies in return for 36 weeks of hell, then it would still be worth every single second. The babies have become something that both Angus and I can’t wait to be around, can’t wait to interact with. We both light up at the sight of them. We have both fallen in love, and in return, something between us seems to be even brighter than it had been before. I thought I loved him as much as I could possibly love another person before they were born. I was wrong. I’m even more in love with him now, too.
We’re hoping to come home from the hospital soon. I look back on the day that they were born and want to hold it tight inside of me, so that time, bad future arguments and sensitivities, and fragile memories don’t rob me of it. I want to selfishly guard it all inside of me so that not a drop of it ever goes away. I think the memory of it all makes me glow, and I wonder if anyone can see that glow. If I had to re-live one day over and over again, it would be that day, just because I’ve never felt that complete before in my life. I want time to stop, to hold still, to linger, to let me hold tight to something that I never thought could be mine. The entire day was one of love, between the babies and I, between Angus and the babies, and even more so between Angus and I. He came through for me and for us in absolutely every way imaginable and it makes my heart hurt just thinking about it.
Everything I have ever wanted, ever, came true at 15:54 and 15:56 on October the third. I have the truest, greatest love of my life and two amazing babies, all until the sun comes up over Santa Monica Boulevard.

UPDATED – we busted out at 2100 hours tonight.
My family is home.