Given the amount of energy it requires to raise a child, I find it difficult to imagine how the parents of twins cope. Honestly, it must be simply exhausting.
But to raise twins AND triplets? Well, that’s nothing short of unbelievable if you ask me.
Yet that’s precisely what mother Michella Meier-Morsi and her husband will do in the years to come – and their family is stunning proof that anything can work with the right amount of love and will.
Here at Newsner, we’ve reported on various amazing birth stories since 2015. We’ve covered triplets, albino twins, quadruplets, and so on … the list never ends. But I can’t recall a story quite like Michella Meier-Morsi’s.
Back in 2018, Michella and her husband Mark welcomed beautiful twin girls. Of course, the Danish couple was thrilled, and looked forward to a new, exciting chapter in life. Michella fell pregnant in October 2017, after just over a year of IVF treatment.
”When we got the news that we were expecting twins, I was extremely happy, and at the same time, paralyzed by fear. I was simply so scared of losing them. I read statistics, horrible posts on twin groups about respirators and losses, and I refused to buy anything for the girls,” Michella wrote on her Instagram page in 2020.
The girls were born at 37 weeks by cesarean. After spending six days at the hospital, the family arrived back at home just before Christmas, 2018.
As most people are probably aware, a twin pregnancy can be very tough on the body; Michella got the whole experience of that.
”I was massive, hurting so bad and almost couldn’t walk because of how swollen my body was,” she said in one of her posts.
”My pregnancy was awful and my body is carrying around permanent evidence of it. Filippa and Ophelia, on the other hand, have been absolutely fantastic, and we have made the finest family rhythm with them💕,” Michella writes.
Now, it hasn’t all be joy and laughter since Michella gave birth to the twins; the pregnancy took a severe toll on her body. After giving birth, doctors discovered that she had Diastasis recti, which meant a gap of about 2.7 cm or greater between the two sides of the rectus abdominis muscle.
”Normally the abdominal muscles heal by themselves after the pregnancy, but in my case, after pregnancy with two big girls, it will not happen without surgery,” Michella told Danish radio.
On her Instagram, Michella has been open about her body changes. She has posted pictures of her belly and written several candid posts about her feelings and thoughts on the topic.
Michella is a vital voice because there is far too little talk about the changes that sometimes occur after pregnancy. As a result, many women suffer in silence, thinking they are alone. Others are ashamed to show off their bodies.
After getting the twins, Michella and Mark thought they might be done having kids. They underwent another fertility treatment, but it was far from certain that it would be successful.
Since there was only a 12-15% chance of becoming pregnant, they didn’t want to get their hopes up too much.
As a result, when Michella went in for an ultrasound in 2021, she didn’t know what to expect. Before the appointment with the doctor, she’d been getting a somewhat unusual pain in her body. In Michella’s mind, she’d either had a miscarriage, or was expecting twins again.
But it turned out she was expecting not just one or two babies, but three! Suffice to say Michella and Mark got the shock of their lives.
Michella described the moment in detail for newspaper Expressen:
”When the midwife moves the scanner, we see a third black box. It’s like everything stops. We hear a third heartbeat. It’s getting completely quiet in that room, and I’m starting to cry. I can’t stop shaking and crying” she explained
Of course, Michella and Mark were overwhelmed, but looked forward to welcoming three new blessings to their family. At the same time, they were constantly made aware of the risks relating to such pregnancies.People repeatedly mentioned how bad the statistics with regards to all triplets surviving. The couple were also given information about the possibility of removing one of the fetuses.But this strong mother never hesitated to go through with the pregnancy – even though she had to suffer a lot of pain.
Her giant baby bump grew bigger and bigger – it even turned blue and was covered in bruises. Just days before Michella gave birth, she shared some very honest words on her Instagram page:
”I seriously do not feel ready for three babies,” she wrote.
”I naively thought that I would get ready at some point – that I would feel a joy that the pregnancy is coming to an end and that we should finally meet our trio. But if it were not for the extreme pain, the triplets would have to stay in the stomach for a month or three more. It all just feels so overwhelming.”
Thankfully, things would turn out better than she ever could have imagined.
On January 15, Michella, then just over 35-weeks pregnant, gave birth to triplet boys Charles, Theodore, and Gabriel, via cesarean section.
Michella never thought that her babies would stay in her belly for 35 weeks; that in itself was a victory, in her opinion.
After the “wildest 36 hours” of her life, she was both relieved and extremely happy when her precious boys finally arrived in the world.
And the most important thing of all? The babies were born healthy, and growing as they should. The triplets had to stay at the hospital for 14 days for check-ups before Michella and Mark could take them home.
Today, these fantastic boys are a couple of months old, and keeping their parents busy. Fortunately, Charles, Theodore, and Gabriel have two very proud sisters – but their life today is not free from struggles.
According to Michella, she and her husband only get four hours of sleep per night, and she still has some lingering pain in her stomach.
As one can imagine, raising five children under such circumstances is a considerable challenge.
”It is indescribably hard to have two three-year-olds and three premature babies. Much harder than I had imagined. [My daughters] are angry, defiant, enormously bored, and simply unruly and rude.They miss us and definitely feel let down to some degree. And it’s completely understandable,” she writes on her Instagram.
Unfortunately, it does not seem that Michella’s body will fully recover after her two challenging pregnancies. As a result, she will have to spend a lot of time in the hospital in the future.
”It is quite depressing, in Denmark we don’t focus so much on women’s health after childbirth. Honestly, no one cares, I learned that last time. I have a very good physiotherapist that I will go to soon. But my stomach will not fully recover, I will have to undergo surgery soon,” she told Expressen.
