Our Lives
It had taken me a long time to have my babies. Then they vanished.
As the figure beside me began to speak, I gazed into his big brown eyes and thought: This is music to my ears.
My new boyfriend Ivan had just told me he wanted to start a family and I found myself saying: ‘Yes, me too. That’s what I want.’
Ivan and I had met via a dating ad.
He was Croatian, intelligent and charming.
I’d been living in Croatia for a few years and had been considering moving back home to the UK, but now I could see myself staying and building a life with Ivan.
At the age of 37, I didn’t want to hang around so we started trying for a baby.
I fell pregnant but sadly I miscarried after eight weeks. ‘It’ll happen for us,’ Ivan said. So we kept trying.
A year on, we tied the knot at a hotel on a gorgeous Croatian island, but the miscarriages kept on happening.
Eventually, we booked in for fertility treatment and, because of my age, we were advised to try IVF.
But then I missed a period. I took a test and it was positive.
And at our scan, the sonographer looked at the screen in disbelief and said: ‘There’s two.’
Ivan held my hand as we looked at the two little shapes on the screen.
Twins, I thought.
It felt like a miracle.
Tests showed I had a condition called thrombophilia, a genetic tendency to blood clotting which could cause early pregnancy loss, and I had to inject myself daily with blood thinners.
I was terrified I’d lose the twins and Ivan was too.
One day, I was getting ready for a walk when he stopped me.
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘You must rest.’
He wouldn’t let me do anything.
We discovered we were expecting twin boys but I didn’t dare think about what they’d be like until they were in my arms. Then at 32 weeks, I went into labour but one of our babies had the umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and so I was taken into the operating theatre for a Caesarean.
When I woke up, I asked: ‘How are the boys?’
‘They’re doing well,’ a nurse told me.
We named them David and Luke and, after 11 days in hospital, we were able to take them home.
Life with twins was exhausting but I didn’t mind.
After all I’d been through to have them, I was grateful to wake up to their smiling little faces each day.
But when the boys were two, something happened.
I was made redundant. We were already struggling and I wondered how we’d be able to give the twins the life they deserved so I applied for jobs in the UK.
Ivan was keen for us to move too and, soon after, I got a job near my parents in Woking, Surrey, so we could move in with them.
