"For most of my pregnancy, I didn't know if both of my twins would live"

For the last 17 weeks of her pregnancy, Sharon Francis had to prepare herself for the possibility only one of her twin daughters would survive.

In February, the Melbourne mum and partner Adam Wilkinson had walked out of the doctor’s office beaming after her 10-week ultrasound revealed they were expecting twins. 

“It took me about three weeks to get my head around having twins, but for Adam, in that moment he was over the moon,” Sharon, who has two daughters from a previous marriage, tells 9Honey.

The surprises didn’t end there. A week later, it emerged the twins were monoamniotic – meaning the identical babies share one placenta and amniotic sac. Doctors told the couple it was a rare occurrence, found in one in 10,000 twin pregnancies.

“The emotional rollercoaster started from that day,” Sharon says, recalling how doctors had explained the high risks associated with “MoMo twins”.

“They said, ‘You have to have a caesarean… being one placenta, and the two umbilical cords come off that, if you try and have the babies naturally it can strangle [them].’”

At Sharon’s 16-week ultrasound, each of the babies was assessed. Baby number one was developing normally, but when the sonographer checked the second baby, her face said it all.

“She paused and went white. My heart just broke and I thought, ‘Something’s not right’,” Sharon, who provides personal care for aged care, recalls.  

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A specialist explained the twins’ shared placenta wasn’t feeding them equally, and consequently, one of the babies was just 90 grams – half the weight of her sister.

From that point in the pregnancy, Sharon and Adam returned to the hospital every week to have their twins’ breathing and blood flow closely monitored.

Each week brought with it a wave of “heartache and stress and panic” for the parents-to-be; low blood flow posed a risk of stroke for the twins, while high blood flow could lead to a brain haemorrhage. 

“We were told that the babies only had a 10 per cent chance of both surviving, which was very hard to deal with,” Sharon recalls. 

“When Adam left the hospital, he crashed his car because he couldn’t focus.”

Three weeks later came an even more unfathomable suggestion: that they consider terminating the smaller baby to give her twin sister a greater chance of survival.

“I had Mum with me, and I just looked at her and we both started crying,” Sharon recalls of the conversation.

Fortunately it didn't come to that - but while the next month brought more stable results, the smaller twin’s weight began dropping at 30 weeks. This worried Sharon’s specialists, so they booked her in to “get the babies out” as soon as possible.

Just after 5pm on August 17 - 33 weeks into Sharon’s pregnancy - both of the baby girls were safely delivered via caesarean. 

“Lexi’s was about four times bigger than Madison’s, which was only about one or two centimetres wide. We could see then and there that’s why the food wasn’t going through evenly to the girls,” Sharon recalls.

After being held up over the curtain so Mum could see them – and having their umbilical cords cut with Dad's help – the premature twins were rushed to the ICU and hooked up to breathing machines.

“I didn’t see them until about one in the morning when one of the nurses snuck me down to the ICU so I could spend some time with them,” the mum-of-four recalls.

Though she’d Googled videos of premature babies in the weeks leading up to the birth, to prepare herself – and her daughters Stephanie and Hayley - for how tiny the twins would look, Sharon was still shocked by the sight.

Lexi remained on life support in the ICU for four days before she could breathe sufficiently on her own, while her sister needed another three days before she came off the oxygen.

Almost three weeks on, the twins have recently been transferred to a hospital closer to the family home, where they’ll remain for another few weeks. 

“They won’t come out until about 39 weeks, which is normally when they would have been born. I’ll have to wait, but that’s OK – they’re safe and being looked after.”

Only recently has Sharon had a moment to contemplate everything she and her family have been through since her pregnancy was confirmed back in February.

For Sharon and Adam, finally being able to welcome Madison and Lexi home is a joyful prospect – though they’re all too aware of a new challenge awaiting them.

“The girls are identical, so that’s pretty exciting. Although we’re not sure how we’re going to tell them apart yet,” she laughs.