'Triplets? How will we cope with four wheelchairs?'

Left paraplegic by a car accident, Chantel Emery, 42, was surprised when she conceived naturally. But greater shocks were in store for her

- KATE SKELTON

'My husband Rob and I gazed at each other in utter disbelief. Triplets! What? That’s ridiculous – I couldn’t possibly be pregnant with three babies. Rob turned to the gynaecologist and said, “It’s April 10th not April Fool’s Day – don’t joke.”

But he replied, “I never joke about triplets.”

Even one baby would have been a shock. I was paraplegic after a car accident and my life-changing spinal injuries meant I had no feeling from the waist down. Doctors had told me I wouldn’t be able to have children.

Rob and I had been astonished when I fell pregnant naturally with our first child, Scarlett. But triplets? Wow! As the news started to sink in, we felt nervous – but excited, too.

Then one morning, when I was 26 weeks pregnant, I woke up feeling exhausted. Rob was at work, and as I went to have a shower I got the shock of my life. Taking my clothes off, I saw a baby in my underwear.

Only he didn’t look like a baby. More like a bird or kitten. He was a strange colour and so tiny. I was terrified and had no idea what to do. I told Scarlett, then three, to wake up my 13-year-old stepson. “Go wake up Josh and tell him to come quickly. I need him to help me. There’s a baby.”

Scarlett and Josh came running back. Scarlett was standing outside the bathroom with a look of horror on her face. As Josh tried to help with the first baby there was a gush and another baby came out and slid across the bathroom floor. Then Josh shouted, “There’s another baby hanging upside down by his umbilical cord. What do I do? I don’t want to be a doctor.”

But he tried to help me and called for an ambulance and phoned Rob and my parents.