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Bringing up triplets is a daunting task for any first-time parent, but when one of her daughters was born with catastrophic brain injuries, Lorna Cobbett was not sure she would cope.
Little Essie, who is now 10 months old, has such a long list of medical problems that sadly her parents have been told she will not live beyond childhood.
Lorna, 37, said: “She is a little fighter and inspires me every day, but it has been so, so difficult. It was a shock when I discovered I was expecting triplets – and then this happened.
“I was overwhelmed and kept asking, ‘Why us?’ It was impossible to even begin to know how to care for her, as well as the other two.”
Lorna and her husband Steve found a lifeline in their local hospice, Chestnut Tree House, one of many hospices supported by the Mirror’s Christmas Appeal charity, Together for Short Lives. In Lorna’s words the nurses there have “shown us a path to a quality of life for Essie that we just wouldn’t have found on our own”. Essie, Eva and Roman were born on February 1, this year at 32 weeks, and Lorna had been told throughout the pregnancy that all three were doing really well. But during the caesarean, when Essie came out first, all of her “good” blood rushed back through the umbilical cord into the placenta she had shared with Eva and went to her instead, in what is known as an acute twin-to-twin transfusion. This led to her brain injuries. Then, the same day, she suffered a lung haemorrhage, her body started to shut down, causing a stroke, and her brain tissue collapsed in on itself. Chronic lung disease means Essie is permanently supported by oxygen through a tube into her nose, and she cannot swallow properly, so is fed through another nasa temp and s Celsi
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