Sextuplets mother Vicky Lamb shares the joy - and anguish - of a tumultuous first year...
At the stroke of midnight, Vicky and Andy Lamb saw in the New Year with four bottles — not champagne, but the small plastic variety topped up with infant formula for their quartet of young babies.
Every evening the Lambs set the alarm for midnight to wake them from their bleary-eyed slumber — usually on the sofa in the living room — to give seven-and-a-half month old Layla, Eric, Ellen and Rose their ‘dream feed’, and New Year’s Eve was no exception.
Little miracles: Vicky and Andy with their four surviving sextuplets, from left, Ellen, Eric, Layla and Rose
It takes a full hour to feed all four infants before these proud, but exhausted, parents can finally climb the stairs and collapse into bed before the whole feeding, burping, changing, cuddling, playing, napping and washing routine starts afresh — and Vicky and Andy wouldn’t have it any other way.
‘When we look at them all sleeping peacefully, sometimes we just can’t believe they are finally here, home with us,’ says Vicky, 32, a former nursery manager from Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
‘For us, 2010 was such an emotional, life-changing, traumatic year. So what we are hoping for in 2011 is health and happiness for our children.’
When the Lamb sextuplets were born by Caesarean section on May 14 at 26 weeks, it was touch and go whether any of them would survive.
The odds of their birth were more than four million to one — and in those early days, they were so tiny that each could fit into the palms of two cupped hands. The premature babies – four girls and two boys — weighed between 1lb 5oz and 1lb 15oz.
Vicky and her husband Andy, 31, a former soldier, ‘prayed for a small miracle’ as their six babies fought for their lives in the specialist intensive care unit at John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford. Sadly, baby Matthew — the fourth to be born — died within two weeks of the birth after suffering a bleed on the brain.
Then, in July, Pippa — the smallest of the sextuplets — succumbed to necrotizing enterocolitis, a condition affecting some premature babies born with immature bowels which are prone to infection and inflammation, leaving the baby unable to take nutrients from milk.
'When two babies died, we reached our lowest ebb, and we wondered how we could possibly sink to such depths and still go on'
With Ellen and Rose both needing major surgery to close ducts in their hearts and Layla suffering from a hole in her oesophagus, which will require further surgery this year, Vicky and Andy sometimes despaired of ever bringing home their surviving babies.
But, somehow, the miracle they were praying for happened.
In August, Eric and Ellen were well enough to go home together. Rose joined them the following month, and in October, Layla, who has to be fed via a tube into her stomach, was finally discharged. The story of the babies’ survival — and first months at home — will be told in an ITV documentary later this month.
Today, this little foursome look in surprisingly robust health, breaking into heart-melting smiles as their parents coo over them.
Now weighing between 10lb 6oz and 12lb 2oz, they are teething, and appear to be reaching all their milestones. With each new week the Lambs, who also have an older daughter, Grace, aged six, can relax a little more and enjoy the babies’ emerging personalities.
‘Layla is the biggest and seems to be the boss,’ laughs Vicky, ‘Eric likes everything done for him immediately and does not like to be kept waiting, while Rose is either the happiest baby ever or cries likes it’s the end of the world; there’s no middle ground with her.
‘Ellen is very laid-back and giggly, and definitely the favourite of our eldest daughter Grace. She keeps saying: “If I could make a baby out of Play-Doh, it would be like Ellen.” ’
Watching Andy dangling Eric on one knee while cuddling Rose with the other free arm as Vicky scoops up Layla for her lunchtime feed, while chattering away to Ellen, one can only marvel at how they are coping so well with it all.
‘We are really just taking each day as it comes,’ says Andy, who has returned to his work as a health and safety consultant three days a week so he can support Vicky who plans to be a stay-at-home mum until the babies reach school age.
‘We are just too busy to even think about next week, let alone next year, but it’s been wonderful. Hard work, with not much sleep, but great to have them home.’
Fab four: The Lamb babies when they were a few days old...
... and happy and healthy a year on
The garage at the Lambs’ three-bedroom terraced house has been converted into a nursery for the babies. Three white cots are lined up against one wall and a fourth against the other, beside the changing station and sink, where sterilised bottles are neatly lined up for the next feed.
Over Eric’s cot hangs a blue dinosaur stuffed toy, over Layla’s a pink horse, over Rose’s a pink rabbit and above Ellen’s hangs a yellow giraffe. Four identical car seats, donated to the family by a manufacturer, are lined up in the conservatory.
Inside, the house is as neat as a pin, with a wall chart in the nursery marking out what needs to be done and when, and everything in its place. On the drive stands a recently purchased second-hand VW nine-seater Tansporter — to replace the VW Camper van they bought when a family of three.
‘We have got them into a routine, and they are mostly sleeping from midnight right through to 7am unless they are ill,’ says Vicky, who married Andy in 2006 and conceived the sextuplets without the aid of IVF, but after taking Clomid, the same fertility drug she’d been prescribed to help them have Grace.
Vicky was aware of the risk of multiple pregnancy with the drug, but never dreamed she would end up as mother to such a large a family.
'They go through 36 nappies a day between them, and I can't believe how much washing we now have to do'
‘They go through 36 nappies a day between them, and I can’t believe how much washing we now have to do — at least three loads a day,’ she says. ‘It never seems to stop.
‘Sometimes it feels like you have only just finished one round of feeding, cleaning, washing and settling for naps before it’s time to start another round.
‘There are times when it does become a bit overwhelming, especially when I’m tired or haven’t had enough sleep, but I can’t bear to be parted from them for a second and it upsets me when they cry. I know all babies cry, but it’s something I don’t like to hear.
‘Andy and I haven’t been out once since they were born because who would I trust to babysit all four of them? Even if I had the chance to go out on my own, I wouldn’t take it. I just don’t like being away from them.
‘At the moment, there is very little time for us as a couple. We have a very strong marriage and Andy is very hands-on as a father. Like many parents of babies, we have the odd blazing row when we’re tired, but we work well as a team.’
You would imagine that trying to take the babies out would be something of a palaver, but Vicky seems to take it all in her stride.
‘As long as you are prepared, with their food and a change of clothes, then it’s no problem,’ she says. ‘We have two double buggies and I take two in mine and Andy takes the other two in his.’
Andy adds: ‘When we are together, people will always come up and talk to us, most often joking: “You’ve got your hands full!” which we’ve heard so many times now that we tend to respond through gritted teeth.
Precious delivery: Vicky with newborn Ellen, at one time it was feared none of the sextuplets would survive
‘People assume they are quadruplets, but we always think of them as sextuplets as we can never forget Matthew and Pippa.’
For all their apparent contentment today, however, Andy and Vicky are the first to admit there have been dark days when they have struggled to cope with the events of the past year.
‘Those weeks when the sextuplets were fighting for their lives in hospital were the most traumatic, not knowing if they would survive,’ says Vicky.
‘When two babies died, we reached our lowest ebb, and we wondered how we could possibly sink to such depths emotionally and still go on.’
Brother and sister Matthew and Pippa were buried in a joint grave at their local cemetery.
‘Somehow you have find the strength to carry on,’ says Vicky. ‘We still had four babies who needed us and our daughter at home, for whom we had to put on a brave face, because we didn’t want her to see or feel our sadness.
‘When we were finally allowed to bring Eric and Ellen home, our joy and relief was overshadowed by the pain of having to leave Layla and Rose behind in hospital.
‘At home I couldn’t relax knowing that two of my babies were away from me and at the hospital. In a way it was easier when we had all four at home together.’
WHO KNEW?
The odds of conceiving sextuplets spontaneously are around one in four million pregnancies
Then, there are the continuing health worries.
Not long after the babies came home, Eric had to undergo laser treatment on underdeveloped blood vessels and scar tissue in his eyes to prevent blindness, and on Boxing Day they had to rush him to hospital after he became ill with bronchiolitis, a viral infection of the small respiratory airways.
Then there are the practical concerns, too. Five children are expensive, and before long Andy will have to return to work five days a week to support his growing family. And while the garage conversion comfortably houses four babies, Vicky reckons that by the age of three they will have outgrown their house, with a garden too small to contain quite so many lively toddlers.
Yet, not for one second does she regret refusing the selective reduction she was offered by doctors when a scan at 12 weeks revealed — to the Lambs’ shock — that she was carrying six babies.
‘Once we knew that we did have six, I couldn’t have lived with myself if I’d had to choose which ones lived and which died,’ says Vicky. ‘We lost Matthew and Pippa, and there is not a day when I don’t think about them, but at least we had them for that short time and they had us. They were wanted and loved. If all of them had survived, we would have been even happier.’
Capable and calm, it is clear that the Lambs appear more than up to the challenge, and take each setback in their stride — even a Christmas ruined by Andy falling ill with flu on Christmas Day. ‘On Christmas Eve Andy had gone to so much trouble to make it special for the children, especially Grace,’ says Vicky.
‘He went onto the flat roof of the garage extension and marked out tracks in the snow, so he could show Grace on Christmas morning where Santa’s sleigh had landed.’
‘It was our first Christmas with the babies, and we really wanted it to be special, so I was a bit grumpy with Andy when he was too ill to cook Christmas lunch.
‘Luckily, my mum Diana, who lives just round the corner with my dad Richard helped us out by cooking our dinner.
‘I drove round to their house with Grace, leaving the babies with Andy, to pick it up and bring it home.
‘Sitting in the car I did shed a few tears, because it was the first moment I’d had time alone to think and dwell on all that has happened to us this past year.
‘There were tears of sadness for Matthew and Pippa, tears because I felt so tired and disappointed that Christmas wasn’t how I’d hoped, but also tears of happiness and thanks that we still have Layla, Eric, Ellen and Rose.
‘But when they smile, all the pain and heartbreak has been worth it. Sometimes I just can’t believe that these four lovely babies are really ours.’