Chard miracle twins start school (From This is The West Country)

Chard miracle twins start school

6:00am Saturday 8th September 2012 in News

PARENTS are taking their children to school for the first time this week and for one mum and dad in Chard it will be an especially poignant moment.

Twins Sophie and Jessica Dunn, who turn five on Tuesday and started Redstart Primary School on Wednesday, have faced massive challenges in their young lives.

They were delivered by Caesarean section at Musgrove Park Hospital in Taunton on September 11, about ten weeks early, and were kept in incubators and on breathing equipment in the neonatal unit.

Their parents, Rachael and Jason, who live in Combe Street, were told the girls may not survive as they endured numerous infections and complications – Jessica had a brain haemorrhage and a thickened heart and Sophie developed three hernias.

But five years on the girls are now looking forward to starting school.

Rachael said: “It’s going to be an emotional time when we take them to school for the first time.

“It was nothing short of a miracle that they survived what they had to go through when they were first born.

"They are our little miracles and we’re so lucky to have them.”

Sophie was born weighing just 1lb 12oz and Jessica 3lb 2oz after developing Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome in the womb.

TTTS is a dangerous condition in which twins share the same placenta, one effectively feeding off the other.