By Ruth Dowds
MICHAEL and Scott Baker have been dubbed ‘miracle twins’ after beating catastrophic odds of mortality at birth to become thriving 19 year-old university students.
The genetically identical brothers were born on October 2, 2006, at 25 weeks’ gestation and their parents David and Milena were told by doctors that both boys were unlikely to survive.
The Bangor family has spoken of their experiences of defying the odds so that they might offer hope to other parents on World Prematurity Day this week.
David explained that the alarm was first raised when Milena began experiencing stomach pains which continued to worsen over the period of an hour.
Initially she was taken to the Ulster Hospital but the ambulance was quickly diverted to specialist facilities at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Belfast.
Said David: “Scott was born in the ambulance and they were prepping Michael for a C-section because he was breech, but he was so small he was pushed out anyway.”
David explained Michael was resuscitated at birth, and given a 10% chance of survival, while the twins’ parents were told Scott would not survive.
Michael was born weighing 2lb and dropped two ounces and Scott weighed 1lb 10oz and dropped to 1lb 8oz.
Due to the poor prognosis the hospital took photographs of the boys but after four hours David and Milena were eventually allowed to see them.
“Looking back it was a blur,” said David. “You have no idea what’s happening or of what’s in front of you. We could see how sick they were by the photos they brought us but until you walk into the intensive care unit and you hear all the beeps and see all the incubators, you have no idea what’s in store for you.
“As Michael was breech when he came out, he was bruised all over and his whole body was dark blue, while Scott was literally transparent because of how early they were.
“Milena was in the hospital with them for the first few nights and I got a call around midnight on the second night asking if we had any choice of religious priest because Scott wasn’t going to survive the night.
“He was baptised that night and we stayed with him all night and so did the priest and in the morning he was something like 0.05% better but the prognosis was that he still wasn’t going to survive and if he did he would be life limited and not walking or talking.”
At the time it was almost unheard of for twin boys born so prematurely to survive, though their outlook would be considerably better today.
“Some days were okay, other days you took two steps forward and five steps back. Our focus was on them, you forget about yourselves,” said David.
Under hospital care Michael’s condition stabilised but Scott faced many ups and downs with heart and kidney problems as well as an issue with his digestion that continues to cause him problems.
It took him 21 days to digest 0.5milligrams of milk and he has since been diagnosed with an extreme food phobia, as a result of his prematurity.
It means that he eats a limited diet, consisting of skinny chips, waffles with chocolate spread, glasses of milk and a carrot juice fortified with vitamins.
It soon became clear that Scott’s health was significantly more impacted than Michael’s by the circumstances of their birth, but Michael has supported his brother every step of the way.
Explained David: “When they were about a month old one of the nurses in the hospital noted that the closer the incubators were together the more stable Scott’s heart rate was, so they often used to move them into one incubator.”
Then, when they came out of intensive care at eight weeks old and were moved to special care, they needed to be taken off their ventilators.
Worryingly, Scott was unable to breathe on his own but once Michael joined him, he never needed the ventilator again. It was then that a nurse called them, ‘the miracle twins’.
Said David: “She said she had never seen anything like it in 30 years.”
In all, Scott has had six operations and he is deaf, has autism, chronic lung disease, he’s had kidney failure, liver disease, heart failure, hernias and he is often lethargic due to his food phobia. “Yet there they are today, both at Ulster University in Coleraine doing marine science,” said David.
Describing how their experiences have bonded them, Michael says: “We feed off each others’ strengths and that’s what makes us really close all the time.
“We are never really apart because we are so connected on many levels. We understand each other in a way that nobody else really does. What could be seen as differences we see as things to bond over.”
Read the full story in this week’s Spectator – on sale now.
