MIRACLE TWINS’ FIRST CUDDLE
SNUGGLED up together and almost holding hands in their sleep, this is the heartwarming moment twin baby girls were reunited after spending their first six weeks apart as they battled for life. Darcey and Eden Mold, who were born six weeks premature and with holes in their hearts, were immediately placed in separate incubators.
Weighing just 4lb 13oz each, they were wired up to a tangle of bleeping monitors, tubes and drips.
After weeks of complications and treatments in hospital, the twins were finally well enough to go home and have their first cuddle in a Moses basket, dressed in matching pink sleep suits.
Their mother Katy, 31, said yesterday: ‘They’re both little fighters. They really are both little miracles.’
The twins were born just one minute apart in an emergency Caesarean on November 25, after Mrs Mold’s waters broke 34 weeks into pregnancy when she choked on a crisp.
Eden, who was born second, was immediately whisked away for checks and medication as she had large holes in her heart.
Mrs Mold, who was wheeled in her hospital bed to visit the pair in intensive care nine hours after their birth, said: ‘Just seeing them so small and so helpless, it was very hard. I couldn’t hold them.
‘Sitting around watching them in a box was the hardest thing.’
But this was only the start of an emotional roller coaster for Mrs Mold, a college secretary, and her husband David, 47, who runs an event management business.
When Eden was eight days old, she had to have a six-hour opera-
‘They really are both little miracles’
tion to repair narrowing of her aorta, the large blood vessel in the heart, and to have her pulmonary artery ‘banded’ to reduce blood flow to her lungs.
The operation was a success but days later Darcey, who had been allowed to go home because her heart condition was not life-threatening, turned blue and was rushed back to Southampton General Hospital where her sister was recovering.
Diagnosed with bronchiolitis, a respiratory infection, Darcey spent 12 days sedated and ventilated and had to be given a blood transfusion.
Eden was finally well enough to go home on New Year’s Eve and Darcey on January 2. They joined their sisters, Matilda, six, and Jemima, nine, at the family home in Sway, Hampshire. Now nearly four months old, the twins are both making a good recovery, although Eden faces further heart surgery this year, when surgeons will patch up the holes in her heart.
Mrs Mold said: ‘I feel like I have been running on this rollercoaster of adrenaline ever since the birth ... I’ve been constantly on red alert, worried my children might die. I feel very lucky that both my girls are okay at the moment.’
She added: ‘Everyone at the hospital was amazing.
‘The care we’ve had has been second to none ... I’m glad they’re both better and doing well, we couldn’t be prouder.’