‘MEET our MIRACLE BABIES
THE A PLACE TO CALL HOME STAR IS COMPLETELY SMITTEN WITH HER BEAUTIFUL TWINS
Wild excitement was followed by sinking dread when actress Abby Earl went for her first pregnancy scan. First came the huge surprise that she was expecting twins – but within seconds, the A Place to Call Home favourite also learned that one of them had a rare, life-threatening condition.
It sounds like a television drama script – yet for Abby and her fiancé, British writer and musician Christopher Unwin, the heartbreaking news was horribly real. One of their beautiful unborn babies had a serious, potentially fatal, bowel complication.
“It was a really surreal moment when we found out,” the 31-yearold star recalls of that fateful 12-week scan. “Christopher spotted two little heads and was first to respond, before even the doctor. He was apologising to me, because he’d always wanted twins and felt he’d willed them into being. And I was laughing and crying, because it felt really special.
“But then the room went quiet and we realised something was wrong. We found out almost the exact same moment that one of the twins had complications and would need surgery straight after birth, so it was a really hard afternoon.
“We tried to keep the joy and excitement alive and we had exceptional care throughout the pregnancy, but it was a constant worry – although we couldn’t let these little creatures know that!”
The new mum beams as she tickles her identical, cute-astwo-buttons babies – Kofi Graham Unwin Earl and Elyas Christopher Unwin Earl – at the family flat in Highgate, London. She is still rejoicing at being safely home after spending nine weeks in emergency hospital accommodation following the boys’ safe delivery by caesarean at 4.24pm and 4.26pm on November 25 last year.
“They were actually due on January 1, so they were very premature,” says Abby, who shot to fame as rebellious Anna Bligh in A Place to Call Home. “They were little, they weighed just 2.3 and 2.5kg, but they did really well.”
Once the boys – initially known simply as Twin 1 and Twin 2 – arrived at London’s University College Hospital, the ailing baby was rushed straight around the corner to Great Ormond Street children’s hospital for surgery.
For four tense days, until they were discharged from maternity care, Abby and baby Elyas were separated from Kofi.
“That was horrible, really hard,” explains the former Love My
Way ingénue. “But Christopher was amazing, walking constantly between the hospitals to spend time with all of us.”
Kofi remained in hospital for nine weeks, hooked up to a battery of life-saving machines, while his twin brother and anxious parents stayed nearby.
“It was a really surreal time,” smiles Abby, who grew up on the NSW South Coast. “Christopher and I felt like we were living on another planet, but the world kept turning. The bushfires were raging at home, right where I come from. So it was really bizarre.”
As Abby says, she and 35-year-old Christopher got off to “an unusually rough start” as parents, but their partnership has survived and thrived to the point where they plan to marry once the boys are big enough to play a role in the ceremony.
“I couldn’t have done it with anyone else, neither of us could. That’s how we know we are so right for each other,” she says of the man she met through a mutual friend on holiday in London almost three years ago.
Today, with her adopted city in COVID-19 lockdown, Abby is thankful to stay home with her babies, although she looks forward to getting back to
work once the world returns to normal. “When we were in hospital, just holding it all together, getting up and getting dressed seemed pretty impossible sometimes.
“Now it’s so nice to be able to spend all day in my pyjamas if I want, have a bath with the boys, just do things on a whim. That’s really lovely.”
Best of all, however, is Kofi’s bright outlook for the future.
“He’s fine now and the doctors say by the time he’s 5, we won’t even know he ever had a complication. It was an anomaly, not genetic, just a freak thing, and that’s hard to get my head around.
“But the lesson I took from it is that when weird things happen, there are so many heroes who selflessly step in to save you.
“I don’t want to gloss over this chapter. I want Elyas and Kofi to know about the doctors and nurses who cared for them and gave them so much. That’s a beautiful thing, how many wonderful people there are in the world. And that’s what I take from all this, I think
– the gratitude.”