By Lucy Laing -- from www.mirror.co.uk
When Hayley Phillips gave birth to Ryan at 29 weeks, she expected his twin Lewis to put in an appearance soon afterwards, but she was in for a long wait.
When Hayley Phillips gave birth to her son Ryan 11 weeks early on her bathroom floor, she assumed his twin brother was on his way.
But by the time she got to hospital to give birth to the second baby her contractions had stopped as though she’d finished giving birth.
And it wasn’t until almost three days later that Hayley finally had her second
boy, Lewis.
“The doctors had never seen anything like it before,” says Hayley. “My body just shut down after giving birth to Ryan.
“I nursed Ryan for nearly three days before I finally went into labour again.”
Hayley, 31, a team manager for a bank, and her fiance Craig Selbee, 31, a bank manager, had been thrilled to discover they were expecting twin boys.
“We were so excited when the doctors told me I was pregnant with twins at my first scan, and then that they were both boys at the second scan,” she says.
The pregnancy went smoothly until at 29 weeks, in August last year, Hayley went into labour.
“We were at home one evening when I felt a sharp pain,” she says.
“I went upstairs to the bathroom and felt the sudden urge to push. It all happened so quickly.
“One minute I was watching TV, the next I was on the bathroom floor giving birth.”
Hayley and baby Ryan, who weighed 2lb 14oz, were taken to hospital where doctors expected her to give birth to her second twin in minutes.
But as hours ticked by, there was still no Lewis. “As I arrived at the hospital the labour pains had disappeared and it felt like I’d never even given birth,” recalls Hayley.
“Three hours later the doctors examined me and they told me that the contractions had stopped.
“They couldn’t understand it, as usually when one twin is born, the other quickly follows.”
The following day, Hayley still hadn’t gone back into labour. Craig and Hayley filled the hours waiting by tiny Ryan’s incubator.
“I still had this huge pregnancy bump and we were looking at Ryan in his incubator,” she says.
“Lewis was in no hurry to make his appearance.
“We’d told all our family and friends the good news, that Ryan had been born.
“None of them could believe I was still pregnant with Lewis.”
Concerned for Lewis’s well-being, doctors arranged for a scan.
“I’d been used to having scans and seeing my womb jam-packed with the twins, vying for room,’
says Hayley.
‘But now there Lewis was, wriggling around all by himself. It just looked like he was making the most of the extra space. He was almost doing somersaults.”
Despite her joy at seeing Lewis was thriving, she admits looking at the his image on the monitor was strange.
“During the scan, I was holding a photo of Ryan in his incubator,” she says.
“I kept glancing down at the picture and then up at the scan of Lewis and it was weird. I wanted my twins to be together again, like they were supposed to be.”
Hayley and Craig weren’t the only ones to be surprised by this unusual situation – medical staff at Sunderland Hospital were equally stunned.
“The sonographer told me she’d never come across such a long wait,” she says.
Hayley wasn’t allowed to remove Ryan’s umbilical cord or breast-feed him because doctors feared either could trigger a premature second labour.
So Hayley had to endure the discomfort until she finally went into labour the next day, and Lewis appeared weighing 3Ib 3oz, after a six-hour labour – 51 hours after his brother.
“It was such a relief,” says Hayley. However, the twins were still not able to be together as, although Ryan was doing well enough to be moved on to a low dependency ward in the neonatal unit, Lewis needed more intense
treatment.
“He had to be ventilated for three weeks as he needed four operations as his lungs weren’t properly developed,” says Hayley.
“At one point, the doctors had to put him in a coma so that his lungs could heal.
“It was very traumatic. I began to wonder when our twins would ever actually be together.”
The boys finally met after five weeks when Lewis was moved into the same ward as Ryan – and Hayley and Craig were able to cuddle their babies together.
“It was such an amazing feeling being able to hold both my boys, one in each arm,” says Hayley. “It was a dream come true and brought a tear to my eye.”
Another milestone moment came a week later when the twins were both finally strong enough to be taken out of their incubators and dressed.
“Until that point they’d only been able to wear vests and nappies but at six weeks we were able to dress them in matching blue Tigger outfits,” says Hayley. And after two months they were strong enough to go home.
“The day we were finally allowed to walk them out of hospital was the best day ever,” says Craig.
Now the boys are six months old and doing well.
“They both have heart murmurs but that’s common with premature babies and they’re having regular check-ups,” says Hayley.
“They’re both around 14lbs, which is fine considering they should really only be three months old, as they were 11 weeks premature.”
The non-identical twins not only have different birthdays – two days apart – but different star signs, too. Ryan is Leo and Lewis Virgo.
“It means their personalities will be very different, although I think we can already guess that Lewis will be the laid-back twin,” laughs Hayley.
“We’ll celebrate their joint birthday on the day in between both their birth dates, and then they can still have a party together.”
The couple are relieved they can now put their sons’ traumatic entrance into the world behind them.
“Looking back, those eight weeks were the worst time of our lives because our emotions were all over the place,” says Craig.
“But Hayley and I love each other so much we were able to get through it. The boys were all that mattered.”
Hayley says that when the twins are older, she and Craig will tell them all about their extraordinary birth.
“And this experience hasn’t put us off having more children,” she says.
“I’m just wary about having another set of twins!”
A spokeswoman for the Twins and Multiple Births Association said: “This is rare – we have come across cases where twins were born apart, but the gap has always been less than two days.
“It may have been her body protecting the second twin, as 29 weeks is very early to be born.
“After the first twin arrived, her body may have shut down to give the second twin longer in the womb.”
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