So here's where all of this begins on September 28th.At 11am Nancy calls Mike to tell him that Baby B's Doppler readings from that morning's ultrasound were not good and that Dr Pittini was recommending that they get the babies out NOW! So Mike packs the camera and calls a few family members to let them know what is happening and off he goes to Ward 3East at Women's College Hospital. The photo below was taken at 2.23pm just as the nurses arrived to walk Nancy over to the operating room. Because both babies were breach and Baby B wouldn't have taken kindly to a normal birth the deliveries were going to be done by c-section. Nancy is already hooked up to the I. V. behind Mike at this point.

Both babies came out okay at 4.10pm with Mike standing up to watch them being taken out. No photos of that moment exist for obvious reasons! The first photos are these both taken at 4.41pm.
Here's Emma Clare Crawley weighing in at 1.266kg or 2lb 12oz.

This is Madeline Hope Crawley weighing in at just 590gm! That's 1lb 4.75oz in the old money!!

Emma came out around 30 seconds before Maddy (we've already started calling her that though she'll probably have something to say about it later) so the usual twins debate about who's the older sibling hasn't got a lot of weight - literally!

You can tell from the similar sized probes hooked up to them just how small Maddy is but she is a fighter. Remember we were told not to expect her to survive past 18 weeks and look at her now. She has some problems alright but nothing that the doctors hadn't been expecting and so far the staff at the WCH Neo-Natal Intensive Care Unit are really pleasantly surprised by both of them being so healthy.

Both of them will spend quite some time in the NICU - Maddy more than her sister - before being transferred to another hospital and then finally home.

Twins first page

Week 26 and a bit more

More photos from the twins' birthday