We knew this was going to be a long road… The consultants, doctors, nurses had all given opinions but in reality no one knew how long we would need to be in hospital. It all depended on the growth and health of our babies.

I had mentally prepared for a few weeks in Neonatal. It ended up being 6 for my girls and 2 more for my little boy, 8 weeks altogether. That time is a blur, all day every day in hospital, washing my hands continuously, changing tiny nappies through windows of an incubator, skin to skin, timed cuddles for everyone and praying, a lot of praying.

Our babies were small, tiny, and if there was something below tiny they would probably fall into that bracket too. A was 1.2kg, N-1.35kg, and S-920g!

The first 24 hours were crucial but upon birth they didn’t need any intervention, incredible as we had been prepared for them needing some sort of help breathing etc. There was some delay in my husband and mum being able to see the babies and for him it felt like an eternity he tells me. They brought back pictures to me in recovery and they had even been able to touch them, amazing. I just wanted to leap out of bed, for obvious reasons I couldn’t however I walked quite quickly in recovery which meant I got to wheel my fancy pee bag and chair to Neonatal to say a quick Hi! To my babies before I got sent to the ward, my new home for a week or so!

I barely slept that first night. I expected nurses to rush in to tell me something had happened, but that wasn’t the case. S had been taken to Intensive care at birth for being so small, by the morning he had rejoined his sisters in HDU, small steps but massive relief to have them all together. I honestly had no idea what to expect with Neonatal, we had done a tour of Wexham hospital when we thought we’d deliver there but with the circumstances there was no time for me to see JR’s unit. I recommend visiting the hospital before hand and asking as many questions as you can. It helps with the whole transition of pregnancy, birth and hospitalization.

We were on massive learning curve with lots and lots of information. Each baby had different struggles and therefore different plans. We spent 10 nights in John Radcliffe and honestly it was a roller coaster, most days we had some kind of ‘news’ often it wasn’t all bad but not the greatest either. We had to learn a glossary of new terms and procedures, NG (nasal gastric) tubes, aspirating (feed tolerance check), infections, jaundice, central lines, long lines, constipation and subsequent ‘ butt chips’ as I called them! There were more hurdles but my memory fails me now.

Each night I would lay awake, until exhaustion took over, expecting the phone call or nurse to come tell me I was needed in neonatal, another infection or a change of strategy. It happened a number of times and always the same panic each time!

By the end of the first 10 nights we had had lots of kangaroo care/skin to skin, stopped feeds due to intolerance, increased feeds, x-rays, scans, infections, apneas, bradycardia, and information overload. But overall they were doing well, starting to tolerate feeds and putting weight on. We were on the move!

I was apprehensive and scared, I knew my care at JR had been the reason my babies were doing so well. I was in awe of all the staff there. Now what if moving meant we were compromising the care or if something serious happened would they be in the right place? Essentially we had little choice about the move, they needed the space, but they promised we would be brought back if at all needed.

So the babies traveled in style, a funky transportable incubator, only thing was they were split up… which meant one would be alone in a new place before we arrived. I couldn’t travel with the babies due to limited space in the ambulance too. This provoked a new type of worry, I didn’t want them travelling without me what if something happened?!

In hindsight I had no reason to be scared, Royal Berkshire Reading was outstanding in their care. We had our very own room and open visiting for all which made it easy for family to visit. They were stable and I was somewhat relaxed for the first time in a while. We contemplated staying in Royal Berks until we were ready to go home but the distance meant logistically it was easier to be closer to be home. After a week here we made another move, which would be a home before home for a month or so.

We arrived in Wexham and were given our own room and here we would stay until being moved to low dependency a few weeks later. We had lots of ups and downs in the remaining 5 weeks in NICU.

Nothing prepares you for this time, the relentless beeping of the monitors and the panic when the alarm sounds. Every morning I would arrive and dread the nurses telling me the number of times they had a Bradycardia, slowed heart rate or Apneas,  but slowly these became fewer as my babies starting growing and nearing their due date.