I met my husband just as I got my place at uni but we managed to stay together whilst I did my degree and got married in September 2000 a few months after I graduated. I never wanted children and although we couldn't afford to do everything we'd really like to do we could still go on weekends away to Wales, Scotland, etc climbing, cheap holidays abroad when we liked or spend days in London. All that changed when I shocked myself by changing my mind about having children in January 2010.
We had to wait a few months before TTC because I'd had an abnormal smear and a biopsy to find out if there was anything wrong. The results came back OK so we started to TTC properly about May/June time. Only two months later and a few days after I had been made redundant from my job with an interior design company we found out I was pregnant. The pregnancy went really well and could even manage to have a social life! We joked about me possibly having twins because of my size early on so when we found out we were expecting identical twin boys at a scan at 13 weeks we weren't completely shocked.
The pregnancy continued to go well until my 20 week scan when we found out the boys had severe twin to twin transfusion syndrome and one baby was 3 weeks behind the other so I had to have emergency laser treatment that same day. After that we weren't sure whether they would survive so I ended up staying at home and only going out for scans. Thankfully I hadn't found a new job so didn't have to get time off for all my appointments.
Things started looking good. Both baby's were growing well and we had a scan on New Year's Eve when the consultant said we should be able to go to 34 weeks. However, the following Monday I had a show and went to hospital. I went into spontaneous labour for no apparent reason and gave birth to the boys after only a couple of hours of established labour at 27+4 weeks.
Unfortunately, we lost the smaller twin because he got NEC at 18 days old but after nearly 13 1/2 weeks we were finally able to bring our surviving twin home (that was two weeks ago). He is still on oxygen but that hasn't stopped us from going for walks nearly every day, visiting friends and family or making a trip to Ikea and Asda! It will probably stop us having our usual holidays and weekends away but we're looking forward to eventually being able to show him lots of places.
Even with everything going on I have had to carry on working to a certain extent because I have my own photography business and wasn't planning on taking time out so early. I have made sure that I don't have so many bookings this year and I plan to change the focus to mainly portraits rather than weddings, which it is now, because they only take up a few hours at a time rather than all day. At the moment, whilst he is on oxygen, I'm not sure I could leave him with anyone either so I'm planning to work around my husbands shifts so one of us can be with him but that will probably change when he gets older.
We had to wait a few months before TTC because I'd had an abnormal smear and a biopsy to find out if there was anything wrong. The results came back OK so we started to TTC properly about May/June time. Only two months later and a few days after I had been made redundant from my job with an interior design company we found out I was pregnant. The pregnancy went really well and could even manage to have a social life! We joked about me possibly having twins because of my size early on so when we found out we were expecting identical twin boys at a scan at 13 weeks we weren't completely shocked.
The pregnancy continued to go well until my 20 week scan when we found out the boys had severe twin to twin transfusion syndrome and one baby was 3 weeks behind the other so I had to have emergency laser treatment that same day. After that we weren't sure whether they would survive so I ended up staying at home and only going out for scans. Thankfully I hadn't found a new job so didn't have to get time off for all my appointments.
Things started looking good. Both baby's were growing well and we had a scan on New Year's Eve when the consultant said we should be able to go to 34 weeks. However, the following Monday I had a show and went to hospital. I went into spontaneous labour for no apparent reason and gave birth to the boys after only a couple of hours of established labour at 27+4 weeks.
Unfortunately, we lost the smaller twin because he got NEC at 18 days old but after nearly 13 1/2 weeks we were finally able to bring our surviving twin home (that was two weeks ago). He is still on oxygen but that hasn't stopped us from going for walks nearly every day, visiting friends and family or making a trip to Ikea and Asda! It will probably stop us having our usual holidays and weekends away but we're looking forward to eventually being able to show him lots of places.
Even with everything going on I have had to carry on working to a certain extent because I have my own photography business and wasn't planning on taking time out so early. I have made sure that I don't have so many bookings this year and I plan to change the focus to mainly portraits rather than weddings, which it is now, because they only take up a few hours at a time rather than all day. At the moment, whilst he is on oxygen, I'm not sure I could leave him with anyone either so I'm planning to work around my husbands shifts so one of us can be with him but that will probably change when he gets older.
