Innisfail Twins

When Townsville Hospital neonatologist Dr Sue Ireland took the call on Friday night, 22 March, asking her to retrieve premature twins from Innisfail Hospital, she had a serious case of déjà vu.

Babies James and Lucy Paton were born at 33 weeks, almost three years after Dr Ireland made another mercy dash to Innisfail to retrieve another set of pre-term twins - James and Lucy’s big sister and brother, Charlotte and Jackson.

Last Friday, the twins’ mother, Sarah Schultz, went into early labour and her partner, Shannon Payton, rushed her from their East Palmerston banana farm to Innisfail Hospital where the babies where delivered by emergency caesarean section.

“As soon as I heard Sarah’s name, I started to laugh,” Dr Ireland said.

“I thought ‘surely not again’; I clearly remembered fetching her first twins.”

Already a veteran of a pre-term twin delivery, Sarah said she stayed calm throughout.

“I was calm and in good hands. I’d like to give a shout out to the team in Innisfail; this is obviously not something they do every day but they did a brilliant job and looked after the babies so well while we waited for the retrieval team from Townsville,” she said.

“When I saw Sue come into the room I recognised her straight away and was very relieved. I knew how competent she was and she is such a nice person.”

Dr Ireland described the fateful Friday evening as ‘very busy’.

“We had already sent a team to Thursday Island to retrieve a baby when we had the call from Innisfail saying they had a 33-year-old in early labour with twins and were about to perform an emergency caesarean,” Dr Ireland said.

“We arrived in Innisfail about 11pm with all the equipment we needed for twins including neo-cots and spare ventilators.”

After being collected by the QAS at Innisfail airport, Dr Ireland arrived at the hospital about an hour after the babies were born.

“I saw immediately that they needed respiratory support and that this wasn’t going to be as straight-forward as I’d originally thought.

“Innisfail had done a great job keeping them warm, they had drip lines in and had applied airway pressure but I could see they both needed breathing tubes.”

With both babies ventilated, the Townsville team boarded them onto the emergency aircraft for the flight back to Townsville Hospital arriving at around 6.30am on Saturday.

“By then they had both made a huge amount of progress so we were delighted,” Dr Ireland said.

With the plane to capacity, it was Sunday before Sarah and Shannon saw their babies again.

“It was my birthday so it was a double celebration,” Sarah said.

“I can’t thank everyone involved from both hospitals enough.”

Dr Ireland said James and Lucy were a much easier retrieval that their twin siblings.

“I very clearly remember Charlotte and Jackson,” she said.

“They were born much earlier at 27 weeks and were more complicated to stabilise.

“It was also the middle of a busy work day whereas James and Lucy were retrieved in the middle of the night so it was much less chaotic.”

It’s expected James and Lucy will transfer to Cairns Hospital in the coming weeks to be close to their twin siblings and big sister Caidin, nine, before the family of seven heads home.

“We are very blessed,” Sarah said.

Both sets of twins were naturally conceived.

Fun fact:

According to Townsville Hospital foetal maternal medicine specialist Dr David Watson, the odds of Sarah conceiving a second set of twins were around one in 30.

“The odds of spontaneous, non-identical twins in a first pregnancy are around one in 80,” he said.

“The chance of a second, non-identical twin pregnancy is higher at around one in 30.”

Dr Watson said the reasons for this were not well understood with no clear gene identifier.

“What we do know is that there is a genetic tendency for some women to experience multiple ovulation which increases the odds of a non-identical twin pregnancy,” he said.

“Our heartfelt congratulations to Sarah and Shannon and super well done to our colleague, Sue, for her four-for-two retrievals.”