As I walked through the doors to the birthing unit, my waters broke. At the time, I remember thinking, this is it, I’m losing my babies. I had never had a baby before and didn’t realise it was my waters.

I rang my partner and told him what was happening, and that he needed to get to the hospital now. He got five calls from the nurses until his arrival. Within 1.5 hours of arriving at the hospital, both boys were born. Luka was born naturally, and Austin was born via emergency C-Section, for which I was under anaesthetic.

Campbelltown hospital wasn’t equipped for babies under 34weeks, so I was rushed through recovery to see the boys before they were transferred to Royal North Shore (RNS) NICU. At RNS, the doctors picked up on Austin’s stomach and intestines not forming correctly, so on day 2 he was transferred to Grace Ward at Westmead Children's Hospital.

For the next 15-17 weeks, the boys were in separate hospitals on opposite sides of Sydney.

As we lived regionally, we were lucky enough to be placed at RNS careers accommodation and Ronald MacDonald house. However, I travelled daily between the two hospitals to see both boys.

Our NICU journey was full of ups, and downs, two steps forward and 25 steps back, operations, recovery, feeding, not feeding, feeding again, but after 82 days for Luka and 119 days for Austin, we came home.

Since being home, we have been able to avoid hospitals outside of our doctors and specialist appointments, and we have two very happy, loving, adventurous little 1 year olds who are causing mum heart attacks because of how fearless they are, but I wouldn’t change it for the world."