Celebrity Melody Chen opens up on her rollercoaster journey to finally conceiving her twins, and then another uphill trek when they were born just shy of 27 weeks
It’s 11 am on a weekday and Melody Chen is exhausted.The former ONE FM deejay has just tucked her twins into bed for a nap. She has some alone time to herself before their eat-play-sleep routine begins again.At 22 months, the #Mezzaran duo – as Melody and actor-husband Randall Tan call them – are definitely a handful but their loving mum and dad wouldn’t have it any other way.
“They are our little miracles. It’s been a huge learning curve for us when they came into our lives. I don’t know how it feels with children of different ages but I think it may be slightly easier. Having twins is like having two different characters vie for your attention and affection at the same time,” says the new mum.
A MOTHER’S WISH
Melody, aged 42, and Randall, 45, had been trying for a baby since they married in 2008. They would have their first chance five years later, when Melody got pregnant in 2013. Sadly, their hopes of having a child then was dashed.
“It was a natural pregnancy but it didn’t last. I suffered a miscarriage and had to have it flushed out. At the time, it did put a strain on my marriage. We just had to work through it to really stay together,” she reveals.
“I just didn’t think having kids would be so challenging. After the miscarriage, we just let things be. We said ‘Let fate take its course’ and we decided that for now it would just be the two of us, travelling the world with our two cats for company.”
When Melody turned 40 in 2017, she decided to give pregnancy another shot. The couple turned to in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) in an effort to start a family.
“Randall had to inject me with all sorts of hormones for a month to retrieve my eggs. A normal woman would get 40 to 50 eggs I believe – I had two. After a whole month of jabbing, I only had two,” says Melody.
This story is from the July 2019 edition of The Singapore Women's Weekly.
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This story is from the July 2019 edition of The Singapore Women's Weekly.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 8,500+ magazines and newspapers.
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