Emergency Slash & Grab

31 weeks up the stick and I'm waddling around like Rik Waller with his pants down.
I'm sat in the waiting room at Kings' Harris Birthright centre, swearing like a navvy as I wait for yet another routine scan. I'm the size of the Millenium Dome and about as popular. I am in excrutiating pain and so swollen I feel like I am about to explode and cover these doe-eyed, newly-fertilized ladies with bloody scraps of manky old placenta and cervix.

Dr Darling (my name for her not hers!)calls me into the scanning room and I roll myself onto the table with a "f*&k and b*llocks", she doesn't even bat an eyelid, she's seen me 5 or 6 times already and knows exactly how ladylike I am. It turns out that the reason why I am so ginormous is that my babies have developed acute twin to twin transfusion syndrome and they have to come out immediately.
Oh the drama! The next hour is a blur of phone calls to a flapping husband, son's nursery, panicking parents and stunned best friend before being escorted to the labour ward. Shit! I am now starting to panic, I desperately need a bikini wax and I can't remember if I have put any pants on.

Good news bad news time, the good news is we caught it in time, twin to twin transfusion syndrome can be fatal if undetected or too late, the bad news is, there are no beds for the babes in the neonatal unit so I will have to be transferred to another hospital. It took over 6 hours of calling hospitals around the country to find two beds for the babies, Dundee had them and unless they found any closer I would have to be airlifted there. Bloody exciting stuff, but a real pain for family, friends and the beast to visit. Luckily, Portsmouth comes up with the goods and at 2am we're screeching down the A3 to the coast for my slash and grab (some call it a caesarean). I have been nil by mouth since 1.30pm this afternoon, 15 hours later and I have never been more tempted to drink my own wee. I have started to hallucinate about cans of coke and pints of stella.

Finally, at 8am my time has come. More drama, twin 2's heartbeat has slowed down dangerously so me, Mr D and a team of 8 ran through the corridors to the theatre, stripping as I went. They shoved an epidural in my back and the pain melts away, next thing we hear is the splash of amniotic fluid hitting the floor when they slash my lower stomach and all I can do is blabber on apologetically about the state of the foliage, (honestly, if I was them I would have refused to do it) and at 8.50 and 8.52 my beautiful twin girls are born. A brief 'hello' and they are whisked off to to SCBU for some incubating and ventilating. Nancy and Lola are here, 4lb 1oz and 3lbs 1 oz, safe and sound. It is all over and the relief I feel takes over me and before I can even demand a glass of something alcoholic, I promptly fall asleep.