Did you know unborn babies can have strokes? No? We didn’t either, that was until we were told our identical twins had both suffered strokes before birth.
Toni and I had been together for two years when we decided we would like to have children.
Being in a same sex relationship we had to ring around and find an IVF specialist who was comfortable with our relationship and would agree to help us become mothers.
I was originally from the Sunshine Coast and same sex relationships weren’t an issue, however, Toni was from Moura, a mining town in Central Queensland and the idea of two females becoming parents wasn’t exactly welcomed.
We found our IVF specialist in Brisbane and amazingly, our first ever attempt of IVF resulted in identical twins. Toni and I couldn’t believe our luck.

Image source: Supplied.
We were blessed to be carrying identical twins with only 1 placenta, this is uncommon, particularly with IVF as the embryos had to implant and split within 3 days. The laws have recently changed in Australia and now IVF consultants have to implant the embryos after 3-5 days of gestation as most embryos have split before then so the odds of having identical twins are very reduced.
I now had a “high risk pregnancy” and because we lived in a mining town we had to travel a four hour round trip three out of four weeks of the month to have an ultrasound to keep an eye on the progress of the twins.
At 28 weeks I was no longer able to stay in my home town and Rockhampton would not be able to look after the twins when they were born so I was told to stay no further north of Brisbane than the Sunshine Coast.