FIRST DAYS

MY FIRST PICTURE

I was born on September the 18th at 12:56 pm. Mum's labour was a little unconventional, in that it started with contractions on Friday 14th which kept coming and going and keeping everyone awake until finally mum and dad went to hospital exhausted on Monday 17th where I was eventually born.

The next day I had to have a heart operation called ballooning, this involved shoving a tube through my leg into my heart and blowing up a balloon in order to stretch the valve in my heart. The valve became thicker because I had an identical twin, and during the pregnancy I began to receive some of my sister's portion of blood and nutrients due to the way the blood vessels were connected in our shared placenta - a process known as twin-to-twin transfusion. As I received too much blood my heart had to beat harder than it should, and so one side of my heart is thicker than the other. Sadly, my twin sister died four and a half months into the pregnancy, but thanks to the doctors at King's College and Lewisham and St Thomas and the Evelina Children's hospital (I've already been in more hospitals than MRSA!) I'm now doing pretty well, although I do get chronic hiccups!