MY MILLENNIUM TWINS... 20 YEARS ON!
After beating the odds, this mum couldn’t be more proud of her precious twins
Each year at the stroke of midnight, Kymberley Stark looks around at her precious family and smiles. Their unbridled joy and the merry cheers of “Happy New Year” always fills her heart with happiness. She can’t help but think how lucky she’s been since the fateful night of the new millennium – New Year’s Eve 1999 – when her whole world had been on the brink of collapse.
Like most people at that time, Kymberley and her husband Michael had been preparing for the worst. In the lead-up to the year 2000, rumours of the dreaded millennium bug or Y2K problem were frightening. Experts were worried that due to a glitch in software, computer systems all over the planet would shut down or go into disarray, causing unimaginable chaos.
Banks and insurance company records, important government data, air traffic control towers… everything was on the verge of grinding to a catastrophic halt. And for Kymberley and Michael, things were about to get worse.
“I was seven months pregnant with twins,” says Kymberley.
The couple had tried for more than two years to have a baby, going through 15 months of failed IVF attempts. Falling pregnant with twins, a boy and a girl, was a dream come true.
‘He was so blue and didn’t make a noise. His heart wasn’t beating’
But instead of seeing in the millennium with loved ones, Kymberley and Michael saw Brisbane’s fireworks display from a room in the Mater Mothers’ Hospital maternity ward.
Tests had revealed their baby boy’s heart rate was dangerously low and needed to be monitored. The timing couldn’t have been worse.
“We were quite frightful,” Kymberley, 51, tells Woman’s Day. What if the machines monitoring her baby shut down?
The clock ticked as the chanting crowds of people could be heard across the city… “Three, two, one… Happy New Year!”
SKIPPING A BEAT
Kymberley felt her own heart skip a beat as she waited with bated
breath for disaster to strike. Beep, beep, beep, came the sound from the monitor.
Kymberley and Michael sighed with relief. The predictions of worldwide anarchy were finally put to rest. But they were far from out of the woods.
Just after 9pm on New Year’s Day, Michael was preparing to head home when the alarm on the foetal monitor went off – twin two had no heartbeat.
“I began to panic, but kept telling myself to keep calm for the
babies,” Kymberley says, tearfully. She was rushed into theatre for an emergency C-section, and Emily was born at 9.49pm, weighing a tiny 1.265kg.
One minute later, Matthew was born, his body lifeless. He weighed just 893g.
“He was so blue and he didn’t make a noise. His heart wasn’t beating,” Kymberley utters.
Michael can still recall every harrowing detail. “I’ll never forget Kymberley screaming, ‘Make him cry, please make him cry.’ Those words are burned into my memory forever,” he says.
As medics worked to revive their son, Kymberley remembered the date, and hoped that the millennium bug wasn’t simply delayed.
“I thought, ‘Please don’t let the machines fail today’,” she says.
Thankfully, they didn’t. And after seven weeks in intensive care, the Starks were able to bring their babies home. What’s more, the couple discovered their children were the first twins to be born in Australia in the new millennium.
BRIGHT FUTURE
Fast-forward 20 years, and the twins have grown into gorgeous young adults.
“They are effervescent and always smiling,” Kym says.
But health complications as a result of their birth issues have proved challenging. For Matthew, who has cerebral palsy, it’s meant countless specialist treatments, and Emily was born with weak lungs and suffered respiratory illnesses. But the close-knit clan have overcome every health hurdle and both kids share a passion for sport.
“They were school age champions for swimming,” says Kym proudly.
Matthew, who works as a storage consultant, is preparing to compete in the Queensland State Swimming Championships. He’s hoping for a spot on the swim team for the Tokyo Paralympic Games next year.
He and Emily, who works as a retail sales assistant, get along so well. In fact, the entire family do – they call themselves the “Awesome Foursome”!
On January 1, 2020, the twins celebrate their 20th birthdays, and their mum and dad couldn’t be prouder of their millennium miracles.
“Never a New Year’s Day goes by when we don’t remember what happened all those years ago to save the lives of our kids,” Kymberley smiles.
For the Starks, what started as millennium mayhem turned into millennium magic.