I'm Leanne and I am married to Paul. After two long years of trying for our second child, we finally fell pregnant in
June 2001.We were delighted!

The pregnancy had a few hiccups in the early weeks. I bled at 8 weeks but wasn’t too worried as I'd bled on and off in my first pregnancy. My son Daniel was born healthy at 36 weeks.

I went for my first scan at 13 weeks, to be told I was carrying twins but one had died at around 8 weeks. We were devastated! The doctor told us I would almost certainly go on to have the surviving twin at term. We went home and grieved for our baby.

I bled again at 15 weeks and was given another scan. The baby was fine. The other twin was still there, no change, no heartbeat. I was given no reason for the bleeding and went home to rest.

I had my AFP test two weeks later. The results came back as high risk for both Downs and Spina Bifida. I went to the hospital to discuss my options. We had decided against an amnio. I didn’t want to take the risk of a miscarriage. I asked for a scan to check for Spina Bifida. No Spina Bifida, but something looked different. During the scan, we noticed the other twin looked bigger than before. The sonographer called for the doctor. We were told the twin that had supposedly died had in fact got a heartbeat! That was the reason for the high AFP results.

But the happiness lasted only a few seconds. The doctor said the smaller twins heartbeat was very slow and was considerably smaller than the other twin. We were referred to Birmingham Women’s Hospital as they have better scan machines, for a detailed scan.

At Birmingham we were scanned by a consultant from the fetal medicine team. The scan lasted for an eternity! We were shown to a side room. It was then we were told that BOTH babies had a very bleak outlook. They had a rare condition called TRAP Sequence (twin reversed arterial perfusion), which happens in roughly 1 in 35,000 pregnancies. To cut a long story short one twin hadn’t developed properly due to him not having an umbilical cord. He was being kept alive by the other twin through a blood vessel that connected the two babies. The normal twin was pumping blood for two babies, which meant he was in danger of going into heart failure. There was no chance the smaller twin could survive, he wasn’t viable. But there was a chance we could save the other.

We were given the option of having a new procedure done to save him. We knew this was our only option. It involved putting a needle into my womb and cutting the blood vessel that connected them.

I had it done a week later at 20 weeks. I also had one litre of fluid taken away as I had excess amounts. This is a sign of heart failure in the baby. I was told the procedure had gone well. The following morning I had a scan where another blood vessel was found. This time it was across my placenta and was still putting the baby at risk. The consultant said there was a chance the blood flow could stop by itself, if not I’d have to have the procedure done again. A scan a week later showed the blood flow was still there and I was to have the op repeated the following week.

Three days after this scan I started getting niggly pains, which I thought, was wind. Over the next couple of days the pain got worse and my tummy swelled. It was when I started leaking water that I rushed to my local hospital. A midwife tried to find his heartbeat but failed. She said it was probably due to the amount of water I was carrying. I was then left in pain and scared for 3 1/2 hours before a doctor came to see me. It was confirmed I was losing water and I was told I'd need a scan ASAP. But 10 minutes before my scan my waters went totally. I was 22 + 1 weeks and knew I was in trouble. I buzzed for the midwife. She was lovely. She did her best to calm me down, but she couldn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. My baby had no chance of survival at 22 weeks. I even asked to see the paediatrician but he told me the same.

I was lying in that bed, having contractions, wanting so desperately to keep my baby inside. But nature wouldn’t let me. Within three hours my beautiful but tiny baby boy Dylan was born. He weighed exactly one pound. I was handed this tiny bundle, he was perfect and looked just like his daddy. Thirty minutes later our other baby was born. We named him Mark after our consultant. We chose not to see him due to his abnormalities. I didn’t want my memories of him to be nasty ones. I wanted to think of him as looking exactly like his brother.

I spent the whole night and the following day with Dylan. I kept kissing him, holding him and telling how much I loved him. We were given Dylan and Marks hand and footprints. We then had to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done. We had to walk away, empty handed.

They were buried together two weeks later on a cold and rainy autumn day. It was awful.

We now have a beautiful little girl, Georgia. She was born 11 days before the twins 1st birthday. She has helped to heal a lot of wounds, but she's also made me realise exactly what we lost. We will always tell her and Daniel about their two angel brothers.