Yasmin Butt recalls the trauma of watching her babies clinging to life
WORDS AND PHOTOS: YASMIN BUTT ©THE SUNDAY TIMES / NEWS LICENSING
On an autumn morning in 2008, two months before my due date, I was told the twins I was expecting needed to be delivered urgently. I had known for three months that they were going to be born prematurely, as one was growing at an alarmingly slow rate, but the doctors had been trying to buy us as much time as possible to give both children a fighting chance. Now, at 31 weeks and two days, that time was up.
The doctors had discovered a reverse blood flow through the umbilical cord of one of the babies, indicating a serious condition where the placenta was no longer supporting the baby sufficiently and which, left untreated, can lead to foetal death. The twins were coming and I felt terrified – and things were about to get worse. The neonatal intensive care ward at our local hospital, the Queen Elizabeth in Greenwich, south London, was full, which meant we were in a race against time to find another place for us all.
Early days
I was 36 when I conceived and from its very earliest days my pregnancy was difficult. On a work trip in Holland shortly after I found out I was pregnant I began bleeding. At an appointment at the early pregnancy unit at St Thomas’ Hospital in central London, my partner Matt and I were relieved to discover I hadn’t miscarried and learnt that we were expecting twins. Still, from that moment on I couldn’t shake the feeling that something would go wrong.
My sense of foreboding became a reality at my 20-week scan. As one junior doctor measured the second twin and called out the numbers, the other, who was inputting the figures into the database, stopped typing and turned to look at his colleague. She nodded and whispered, ‘I know!’ The reason for the lack of growth of one baby was thought to be either placental insufficiency, an infection or Down’s syndrome. We knew the twins were non-identical and decided to find out the sex as I needed to feel a close connection with them. This meant I knew it was my daughter who was struggling.
Most of the staff I met were incredible, but I do remember one thoughtless consultant scanning my notes and asking, ‘So, we are going for delivery at 32 weeks, regardless of the death of twin two in utero?’ Another doctor reassured us that the outlook was more hopeful. If we could reach 32 weeks, one twin would have a 90% chance of survival and the other a 50% chance. But now, just shy of the 32
