Nappy new year! Twins born after 8yr battle
SHE feared she would never fulfil her dream of becoming a mother after eight heartbreaking years of trying and failing to become pregnant.
But Michelle Dryland has finally celebrated the family Christmas she has longed for after welcoming twins Amelia and Niamh.
Now, the new mother and her husband, Stephen, are looking forward to the new year and the future with their treasured newborns.
Mrs Dryland, 32, said: ‘I can’t believe I’m a mother at last after all these years of heartbreak. It was an amazing feeling when they were born and I held them in my arms. It was something I never thought would happen.’
Mrs Dryland, a primary school teacher, and her husband, a machine operator, started trying for a family in 2008. When they had still not conceived by 2015, they went for tests.
Mrs Dryland, from Stirling, said: ‘Doctors couldn’t find a reason why I wasn’t falling pregnant. There was nothing that could be done apart from starting a course of IVF.
‘I thought I was never going to be a mother. My friends were falling pregnant and having babies and I wished so much it could be me.’ At the end of last year the couple embarked on a course of IVF at Ninewells Hospital, Dundee. Doctors collected eight eggs from Mrs Dryland – two fertilised but one was weak.
She said: ‘If there had been more embryos doctors wouldn’t have even chosen to put that one back because it was so weak. But there was nothing to lose, so they put both back in.’
Ten days later, Mrs Dryland suffered stomach pains and was diagnosed with ovarian hyperstimulation – a potentially life-threatening complication of IVF in which the ovaries become large and painful. But doctors also discovered that she was pregnant. She said: ‘I was thrilled... doctors thought the stronger twin had supported the weaker one and helped it survive, and just by having another embryo in my womb had helped the stronger twin, too. They were only both surviving because of each other. It really was amazing.’
The twins arrived by caesarian in October – Amelia weighed 7lb 4oz and Niamh 5lb 13oz.
Mrs Dryland said: ‘It was worth all the heartbreak of what we went through to have them.
‘They have such a strong bond between them – and it’s a bond that first began in the womb.
‘I feel like the luckiest mum in the world.’