Xmas trio!
Record premature siblings delivered at Christmas to celebrate sixth birthdays
IRELAND’S tiniest surviving triplets were their parents’ most unexpected delivery on Christmas Day at just 23 weeks.
Every year the miracle O’rourke trio open their presents in the morning and then blow out the candles on their birthday cake in the afternoon.
Matt, Ethan and Lucy O’rourke, from Clashmore in Co Waterford, weighed just over three pounds combined when their mother Pamela gave birth to them in 2012.
Doctors worked on each baby in the labour ward but paediatricians were unsure the smallest baby, Matt, would survive.
UNRESPONSIVE
Nearly six years on and the triplets are thriving at school but Dad Pa still remembers the feeling of shellshock in the delivery room.
He said: “They are a miracle. They weren’t even sure if Matt would make the journey from the delivery room to the neo-natal unit.
“It was less than a two-minute walk down the corridor. They said he would be lucky to be survive. He came out very flat and he didn’t make any sound. He didn’t cry, he was unresponsive. But he pulled through.
“We were just so shocked. There was about 22 people inside the theatre. There was doctors, nurses, midwives, I think there was six on each child.
“They were very straight forward. They couldn’t give hope when there was no hope.
“They were straight into incubators and there was tubes put in and they got them breathing. We didn’t see them until that evening.”
Pa and Pamela were completely unprepared for their birth on Christmas Day.
He said: “It all happened so fast. We thought we were going up to Cork for something normal and we would be back down again eating the Christmas dinner.
“The dinner was a bag of Taytos.” For a time the triplets held the Guinness Book of Records title of being the tiniest surviving triplets in the world although this has since passed on to another set of siblings. The O’rourkes have amazed medics by showing little long-term effects of their premature entry into the world.
When they were born their little hands could fit through a wedding ring, their lungs were barely formed and all three were put on ventilators to help them breathe.
Pa said the children are remarkably healthy and are looking forward to their birthday party on Christmas Day.
He said: “It’s still hard to believe they came through it with flying colours. They are in mainstream school now.”
The triplets are starting to get the idea their arrival into the world was a little bit different to the birth of most babies. Pa added: “They see pictures on my Facebook page and say, ‘Oh, we’re cute’.
COMPLICATIONS
We have all their tiny stuff kept like their old dummies and the arm bands and little nasal things for the oxygen and hats and cardigans and all that kind of stuff. It’s just so tiny.” Their
nine-month-old baby brother Luke was born in March without any complications.
Pa added: “They are hugging and kissing him. They are happy.”
He said he hopes the survival of the triplets gives inspiration to other parents going through the same ordeal with premature babies. Pa said: “The reason we did a calendar years ago was to give people hope.
“The neonatal ward is a daunting place but there is hope at the end of the tunnel.
“Every hour was a big step at the start and then day by day and then week by week. When they started coming off the oxygen it was a big, big step. They were battlers. They don’t really get sick now.
“I remember the doctor used to come into the neonatal ward and used to say, ‘How are my little scientist and doctors?’ We were told that kids who are premature tend to do really well in school.”
Every hour was a big step then day by day and week by week
PA O’ROURKE CO WATERFORD YESTERDAY