It was eight AM by the time Chloe was finally allowed to leave her bed for any length of time. Throughout the night she'd only been allowed to get up to get a drink of water but now the time had come. She was finally going to meet her babies.
Seb still felt tired as he pushed her down the corridor in a wheelchair. He'd barely slept last night, his head was too full of worrying about the twins and his wife and the chair he'd tried to sleep in had felt far from comfy. The day had started early for him with phone calls to share the news of the twins' early but fraught arrival but at least now plans were being made for Chrissie and David to fly over from the UK while his parents were coming over from Germany today. That was one less thing to worry about. Tomorrow the daily journeys would start as tonight Chloe was being discharged and that would mean leaving the twins behind, something that neither of them were really looking forward to.
Chloe's mind was already full of what Seb had told her following his visit to neonatal during the night. Even though she kind of knew what to expect, she still felt anxious. How was she going to feel when she saw these two tiny babies? She'd not been able to have that first skin to skin bonding time with them, she'd not had them placed on her chest straight after their birth and still covered in fluids and blood; what if she didn't feel anything for them? What if that maternal instinct that she'd had last night had disappeared?
As they approached the door a member of the team saw them and held it open for them and she was wheeled into the bright, slightly noisy, scary and unwelcoming room. Like Seb, she soon spotted the incubator containing 'baby Vettel A' and 'baby Vettel B'. That was going to be the first thing to change. Then she saw the two tiny, delicate looking little creatures inside what she thought looked like a clear plastic prison. She simultaneously fell in love with them and felt heartbroken and terrified at first sight. With tubes, wires and sensors attached to them, the shock was instant even though she'd known what to expect from Seb's photos on his phone. She broke down into tears, feeling like she was trapped in some kind of nightmare.
"I know liebe, I know." Seb cooed softly as he bent down to hug her. "I felt exactly the same last night."
It took a few minutes before she could speak and she slowly rose from her chair to get a better view. Her chest and her throat ached with still unshed tears as she looked at her two babies. She couldn't even properly see her daughter's face, it was partially obscured by the tubes from the ventilator.
"Good morning, I'm Anna, I'm overseeing your babies today." A friendly looking woman with plaited blonde hair appeared by Chloe's side. "How are you feeling? I know it must be quite a shock to see them like this."
Chloe could barely speak and instead just nodded mutely.
"How are they today?" Seb asked, linking his fingers with his wife's free hand in a silent gesture of his support.
"Stable, they've had a good night and a feed with the milk you expressed Mrs Vettel." Anna placed a supportive hand on Chloe's back, she looked as though she was about to burst into tears again. "We're supplementing their food too but your stuff is the best we can give them so keep up the good work with the pumping, you're helping them more than you realise."
"When can I hold them?" Chloe asked, it was all she wanted right now.
"We'll see where we are in twenty-four hours time. What we do here is to allow parents some cuddle time twice a day, during tube feeds so hopefully tomorrow morning."
She nodded again, feeling her mood sinking even lower at the prospect having to wait another day before she could even hold her babies.
It was Seb's turn to feel helpless as tears silently rolled down her cheeks. "They're in the best place." He murmured in an effort to lift her spirits.
"They're not, we should be holding them and cuddling them, not looking at them through plastic." She replied glumly.
"I know it's not the same thing but you can touch them." Anna offered. "If you'd just like to wash your hands at that basin over there......" she pointed to a small basin in the corner. ".....I can open these little windows on the side so you can put your hands in and touch them."
"I'd love that, thank you." Chloe replied, feeling her despair lift a little at the prospect of some limited physical contact with the twins.
It took a few minutes for them to wash their hands and come back over due to his wife's stubborn refusal to use the wheelchair but with his help they made it back to the incubator. Seb stayed close but let her go first, knowing just how much she needed this first contact with their newborns. Pulling his phone from his pocket, he tapped on the camera app and decided to film the moment.
Slowly and ever so gently, she placed her fingertips on the small body of her son. Although she could feel the lack of body fat on him, he felt warm and soft and he moved as if he was responding to her touch. "Hey little man, I'm your mummy, remember me?" She murmured quietly.
"Of course he does." Seb said while still filming her.
"You both gave us such a fright." She carried on, moving to touch her daughter. They both looked so fragile and their skin felt soft but delicate like the petal of a flower.
"They'll recognise your voice." Anna said to encourage her to talk more. "They won't have forgotten either of you."
"Stay strong for us, you've got a big brother at home who can't wait to meet you." Chloe continued, encouraged by knowing that her voice would be familiar to them.
"Do we have names? I'd love to be able to call them something other than twin A or B." Anna shared a smile with Seb who seemed to be happier now that Chloe was able to have her much needed contact with them.
"This delicate little flower is Katrina Brunhilde Vettel." Chloe said, smiling for the first time since the twins birth. "Katrina is German for Catherine which was my nan's name when she was alive and the name Brunhilde means ready for battle which is quite apt in the circumstances."
"That's beautiful. It really suits her." Anna smiled, able to see the difference in Chloe's mood already.
"And this little man is Milo Ulbrecht Vettel. Milo means soldier." She replied, lightly tracing her fingertip over Milo's forehead.
"Another very apt name, you've chosen well. I'll update the board and their name tags. It's lovely to be able to call them something other than A or B."
"Seb chose the names." Chloe admitted, glancing appreciatively at her husband.
"They're beautiful names. I'll give you a few minutes alone with them while I update their files."
"Want to touch them?" Chloe asked as Anna left them alone.
"I'd love to." Seb stopped recording and put his phone back in his pocket. As soon as she stepped aside, he put his hands into the incubator to touch his daughter first. Touching Katrina's fragile looking little body felt kind of calming, making him feel that these two were now officially new additions to the family but at the same time it made him feel sad because it reminded him of the precious moments they'd missed out on so far.
Chloe slipped an arm around his waist and leant her head against his shoulder wearily. Leaving the twins behind tonight was going to be such a wrench, thank god she'd got Seb by her side.
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While it felt good to be back in her own bed and even better to have Seb laying close to her, she just couldn't sleep. As well as feeling exhausted, she felt sore and bruised from her caesarean and empty inside, knowing that if everything was normal then she'd still be pregnant right now. Being home from hospital and having had to leave the twins behind just felt so very wrong and the more she lay there unable to sleep, feeling powerless to do anything and missing her babies, the angrier she started to feel. She began to think of the things she was missing out on; being able to hold them, changing their first nappies, being able to feed them, missing out on their first baths. She wasn't there if they started crying in the middle of the night and needed her and for the next six or however many weeks she was going to have to leave them behind every night to come home and let someone else take care of them. What if they forgot that she was their mum? What if they became to attached to the staff that were caring for them and thought they were their parents instead? What if she became detached from them and started to feel like they were no longer hers?
"Have you had any sleep yet?" Her husband propped himself up on his elbow to look at her, his voice deeper than usual, laced with sleepiness.
"This is just useless, I can't just lay here and do nothing." She muttered, her voice shaking with yet more unshed tears and anger. "I'll be fine, you just go back to sleep. At least one of us finds it easy to switch off and relax."
Seb bit his tongue for a moment, fighting the natural urge to retaliate. Starting an argument was pointless. He still felt the need to defend himself from her obvious dig at him though. "You think I find it easy? I've barely slept. This is hard for me too. I want to be back at that hospital with them just as much as you do."
Lifting an arm and draping it across her eyes, she sighed. "Sorry, I shouldn't take it out on you."
He shuffled closer to her. He was desperate to either hold her close or lay an arm across her body but he couldn't, not with her surgery wound still so fresh and painful. Instead he kissed her shoulder a few times. "Things will get easier, I'm sure of it."
"I guess they have to, they can't get much worse can they."
"We'll get there." He murmured, kissing her shoulder again. "How are you for pain? Need any more pain killers?"
"Haven't got any tranquillisers have you? I think that's pretty much the only way I'll get any sleep."
"I'm afraid not. We'll just lay here quietly, just know that I'm here and I love you."
His softly spoken words seemed to at least quell her anger and she removed her arm from across her eyes and looked his way. "Kiss me."
With a smile, he leant over and quickly found her lips in the darkness of their room. He kissed her slowly and softly, wary of causing her more pain but also savouring the moment because kisses like this had been understandably non existent since he'd left for Baku.
She sighed softly as he parted their lips, his kisses always made her feel better even if it was only for a short time.
"Please try and sleep." He whispered, giving her one more kiss before he settled back down beside her.
"I'll try." She replied, doubting that she'd sleep at all tonight.
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The next morning had felt a bit chaotic. Seb had had to take part in a Zoom call that he simply couldn't get out of, Britta had arrived with merchandise that apparently had to signed this morning and Luis had been very uncooperative for his grandparents, refusing to eat his baby porridge and knocking the bowl out of Norbert's hand, sending it contents splattering all over the floor in the kitchen. He only seemed to calm down when Chloe entered the room and so she'd ended up feeding him while also trying to express more milk for the twins. She couldn't blame poor Luis for misbehaving, he was probably feeling rather confused and had been wondering where his parents were the day before. She tried and failed to stop herself from feeling guilty, she wouldn't be able to devote as much time to him over the next few weeks and that made her feel like a bad mother.
Eventually though, peace and some kind of order was restored and she arrived with Seb to neonatal, armed with supplies of her recently expressed milk.
This morning, it wasn't such a shock seeing her tiny babies though it was still just as heartbreaking and she told herself that she was going to have to toughen up if she was going to get through these next weeks without breaking down.
"Good morning." Anna sounded and looked annoyingly cheerful and awake and Chloe was sure that she looked like a wreck next to her.
"Morning, how are they today?" Seb asked, placing a hand on the incubator as he looked in.
Anna couldn't fail to notice how tired they both looked; tired and in dire need of some good news. "They've had a good night, no dramas, they remain stable and last night we gave them a very quick wash during nappy changes. This morning we'll weigh them and then they can have a cuddle with you both while they're fed."
"We can hold them?" Chloe asked, her ears picking out the word 'cuddle'.
"Yes." Anna smiled, noting the way both of their anxious expressions lifted immediately as they shared an intimate look with each other. "I know your babies cannot wait to have a cuddle with you both."
With Seb's arm slipped affectionately around her waist, they both looked on as Anna opened up the incubator and lifted out the first tiny twin, Katrina.
If Chloe had thought Katrina looked small in the incubator next to her slightly bigger brother, now in Anna's careful hands she looked tiny. A sense of guilt and grief pressed down on her chest, that tiny little human being should still be inside her. Both of her babies should still be in her tummy where she could keep them safe, nurture them and grow them. Instead she felt like her own body had cruelly rejected them, forcing them to leave the sanctuary of the womb to be born before they were ready. As another woman wheeled a set of scales over on a trolley, she could only watch as her daughter was carefully placed on them to be weighed.
"She's down to three pounds and twenty grams." Anna stated as the other woman wrote it down on the clipboard that was attached to the frame that the incubator was mounted on.
"She's losing weight?" Chloe asked worriedly. Katrina looked like she couldn't afford to lose weight, she looked fragile enough as she was.
"It's okay, it's perfectly normal for babies to lose a little weight when they're first born, even premature babies. The first couple of days is always when they lose a little weight, I'm sure she'll start to gain again in the next day or so." Anna explained quickly to reassure the worried looking parents. "Now why don't you remove the top half of your clothing and get yourself comfy in the chair....." She pointed to two blue, faux leather, upright armchairs, that were close by. ".....and we'll place Katrina on to your chest for a skin to skin cuddle."
"Even my bra?" Chloe asked, feeling a tad self conscious at the thought of being so undressed in front of everyone.
"Yes, don't worry we'll cover you and Katrina with a blanket."
Still feeling sore and achy from her surgery, she made her way over to the chair and with Seb's assistance she got undressed. Getting herself comfortable, she relaxed in the chair and held her breath as Katrina was gently placed on her chest. At first she'd been worried about the ventilator, not wanting to accidentally unplug the tubes from the machine but she soon realised how close to the machine she was sitting as it was moved closer to the chair. The moment she felt the warmth of Katrina's body against her skin was one of those moments that she'd never forget and it also hit her just how light and small her baby felt. Placing her hand beneath Katrina's nappy covered bottom she realised that her daughter's behind fit neatly into her palm and her weight.....if it wasn't for her body heat and the tube of the ventilator, Chloe would have barely felt that her baby was there. Still, this skin to skin contact made everything feel better. For the first time she actually felt like she was their mother. As Anna covered her and Katrina with a blanket, she actually felt more at peace and like her two babies might really be okay.
Seb watched on with a lump in his throat. Seeing his wife with their newborn daughter had made him realise how small Katrina looked too and he could also see just how much this moment meant to Chloe and how much good it was doing her.
"Milo has stayed the same at three pounds, three ounces." Anna informed the other woman, making Seb turn around and realise that Milo had just been weighed. "Would you like Milo now Chloe or would you like daddy to have a cuddle?" She asked, not wanting Seb to feel left out.
Chloe looked up at Seb who looked a little nervous at the prospect of holding his very small son, he looked her way, his expression changing and silently asking for her opinion. "I won't mind if you want the first cuddle with Milo, I'm sure we can swap or I can take him as well as Katrina in a while."
"You sure?" He asked, seeing how proud she was starting to look with their daughter.
"Very sure, time to get your kit off Vettel." She smiled, wriggling her eyebrows.
He broke out into a smile too, Chloe must be feeling better about things if she was able to bring a bit of humour into the situation. With Anna patiently waiting, he removed his white t-shirt and sat down in the chair next to his wife. Milo was then gently placed on his chest. Supporting and cradling him carefully with his hands, Milo felt warm, cosy and already familiar. As if Seb had always known him. It didn't take away from the facts though. The twins were tiny, they were covered in wires and sensors and this wasn't at all how he had imagined their start to parenting twins would be.
"How does it feel?" Chloe asked quietly as Anna draped a blanket over Milo and Seb. "He feels light, yeah?"
"To be able to finally hold him feels so good." He turned his head to look at his wife. "You're right though, he feels so light. If it wasn't for how warm he feels I don't think I'd know he was on me." Holding a premature baby who was attached to ventilator because she couldn't breathe very well on her own, Chloe was glowing with pride and looked the most beautiful and strong that he'd ever seen her. But then she started to crumble and holding Milo, he felt unable to help her. "They'll be okay liebe, this is progress. Yesterday we couldn't hold them, today we can. It's a small step but it's a step closer to us taking them home."
"I just feel so guilty." She covered her eyes with her free hand and fought not to cry, anxious that if she broke down then she'd move Katrina too much and maybe hurt her.
"No, don't. You've done nothing wrong."
Setting things up ready to tube feed both babies, Anna stayed quiet to let them have these moments to themselves. The way Chloe was feeling was completely normal, nearly every mother she'd encountered in neonatal had questioned themselves and blamed themselves for their babies being born early when there was nothing any of them could have done. It was simply down to Mother Nature.
"They should still be growing inside me, it's my fault they're premature." Chloe sniffed.
Seb managed to free up his right hand and reached across to take her hand in his, holding it firmly. "It is not your fault. It's just nature, it's just the way things go sometimes. You couldn't have done anything differently to prevent it."
"I just feel like my body rejected them and now they've been born too early and Katrina is fighting to stay alive because she can't breathe on her own. I miss being pregnant, I miss having them inside me."
"There's nothing you could have done to stop it from happening. It's just one of those things that happens that we can't prevent. Please Chloe, you mustn't start blaming yourself." He stopped and looked to Anna, needing her support on this.
"Sebastian's right. Babies sometimes arrive early, things sometimes go a little wrong with pregnancies and it's not down to anyone doing something wrong, it's just how it works sometimes. I've seen countless mothers in your situation and they've all blamed themselves and it's never been their fault. You did nothing wrong Chloe. Your babies are here and they have a very good chance of survival that gets better and better as each day passes."
Letting go of Chloe's hand, Seb fumbled in his shorts pocket until he got hold of his phone. Maybe starting a daily snapshot of the twins would cheer her up a bit? "Anna, would you mind taking a few photos?"
"Of course not." She smiled, taking the iPhone from his hand.
"We should take a photo everyday, then we can look back at how they've grown and progressed while they've been in here, don't you think that's a good idea?" He asked Chloe, glancing downwards as he felt Milo move.
"Yeah, sounds good." She replied, giving him a small smile as he took her hand again.
Anna ended up taking several shots, she delicately swapped the babies over so that Seb got to hold his daughter and finished with a couple of photos of Chloe with both of the twins on her chest. In each one, one thing about this couple stood out; they were deeply in love, devoted to each other and strong and Seb's, love, pride and protectiveness over his new extended family shone through. This might be the start of an emotional and sometimes stressful journey but they'd got each other. They'd get through this and be even stronger as a result.