My babies fought - AGAINST THE ODDS

Yasmin Butt recalls the trauma of watching her babies clinging to life

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.