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'Luckiest twins in the world' celebrate first birthday in Norfolk
ROB GARRATT
11 January 2010 14:00
A mother has called her family “the luckiest in the world” a year after a horrific birth that could have proved fatal for her and her twin babies.
Today Nina and Andy Whear sit proudly cradling twins Eve and Alfie, who have just celebrated their first birthday.
But 12 months ago it could have been a very different story when Mrs Whear suffered a tear to the wall of her aorta, which often proves fatal.
She was rushed to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital and then Papworth Hospital, in Cambridgeshire, where her twins were delivered by emergency caesarean before open heart surgery was performed. She was given just a 7pc chance of survival by doctors.
Husband Mr Whear, who also survived a brain tumour in 2005, was sent in for an emotional farewell and a hospital chaplain paid a visit to perform the last rites.
But Mrs Whear woke up as only the second person in the world to survive her condition, called aortic dissection, while pregnant with twins and both babies were delivered safely.
The twins celebrated their first birthday on Wednesday with their two ecstatic parents.
Mrs Whear, of The Street, in Lamas, near Coltishall, said: “It's been a lovely year getting to know them. They are such happy babies, who are always smiling and giggling. You wouldn't know they had a dramatic entrance at all.
“I think we must be the luckiest family in the world; all four of us are still here and we are all relatively well. We are very, very blessed.
“We wouldn't be here without the efforts of the medical teams and I want to say thank you to everyone who helped. If they hadn't all got together, we wouldn't be here to celebrate their first birthday now.”
All four members of the family have had a brush with death after Mr Whear survived a brain tumour in 2005.
The 39-year-old army sergeant, currently based at Swanton Morley, collapsed with a seizure while serving in Uruguay and doctors found the growth which had gone undiscovered for six years.
While it turned out to be benign, the resulting surgery left him with brain damage, and he had to be taught to read and communicate again.
Mrs Whear, 39, added: “Life changed dramatically for us, his whole personality changed. It was a very tough time and I had to learn how to talk to him again.
“But now he's a new person and we don't remember what the old Andy was like.”
The couple married in March 2002 at Taverham Hall.
Today Mrs Whear is still recovering from last year's emergency, and only had the strength to pick her up her children for the first time when they were seven months old.
She added: “At the moment we're just enjoying every single day we have. Andy and I have both had near death experiences and Alfie and Evie could not have got through it, so we don't take a single day for granted, we know it could all be taken away from us.
“We could sit and wallow but that would be no way forward, I feel like the luckiest person in the world to have Andy and be able to enjoy Alfie and Evie when it could have been so different.”
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I met the father and the little girl Evie, last summer at an Open Gardens Event, they lived close to one of the gardens we looked round and came in to speak to the owners of the house and garden, and I got to speak with them after the woman introduced me.
What a brave but lucky family
Lizx
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