WHICH BABY did I want to get rid of?

Doctors were asking Sian Williams to make an impossible decision

- KARA O'NEILL

When you decide you want a family, you can’t help but plan what the future will look like. Of course, sometimes, things don’t turn out quite how you imagined. When I took a pregnancy test on Bonfire Night in 2016, I’d not been expecting to see two solid blue lines. My partner, Aaron, then 27, and I had only been trying for a child for a couple of months, and I was surprised it had happened so soon. But we’d always known we wanted to have children, and I felt grateful things were happening so quickly for us. That night, as Aaron and I watched the fireworks, I felt excited, dreaming of our future as a family of three.

Over the next few weeks though, I began to get stomach pains. I assumed it was just a symptom of pregnancy, but booked an appointment with the GP to be sure. After an examination, with Aaron in the waiting room, the doctor told me I needed to go straight to hospital for a scan. It was the first time I’d felt worried that something might be wrong.

Arriving at hospital, I was seen almost immediately. Lying on the bed while the sonographer put gel on my tummy, I tried not to feel too anxious.

Finally, after a long silence, she asked me if multiple births ran in our families. We explained that Aaron had older twin brothers but that was all.

‘That’s a heartbeat,’ the doctor said, pointing to a tiny, flickering blob. ‘And there’s another one here… and here,’ she added, gesturing to two more minuscule dots. The stomach pains I’d been having were down to high hCG levels – a common symptom in a multiple pregnancy.