When Cassie gave birth to twins, there was one thing that shouldn't happen. It did.

When Cassie and Scott made the decision to move from Brisbane to Mackay to save for their dream acreage property, they had no idea their family was about to get bigger. In fact, they weren't planning on having any more children at all.

Life had already thrown them several curveballs. Within weeks, Cassie had lost both her grandfathers. But during one of their funerals, she felt something was different.

"I took a test that night, and it came up very, very strong straight away," Cassie recalls. "It was definitely a bit of a shock, but also something that I sort of felt in my bones, that there was some sort of other change that was still to come after all of the loss."

The real surprise came at the dating scan, which Cassie attended alone during COVID time, while Scott stayed home with their other children. The night before, they'd joked about the possibility of twins. When she showed Scott the ultrasound image with two distinct sacs, he refused to believe it.

"He just said, 'No, no, show me the real photo,'" Cassie laughs. "And I said, 'No, this is the real photo.' We've just sort of been laughing our way through ever since."

What followed was a journey that would test their strength, courage, and ability to stay calm in the face of unexpected challenges.

Listen to Cassie's twin birth story on Mamamia's Diary of a birth. Post continues below.

Cassie's birth plan went sideways.

At 38 weeks pregnant, Cassie knew she was ready. Having successfully delivered vaginally before and with Twin A (later named Charlie) positioned head-down, she was considered an ideal candidate for a vaginal twin birth. The plan was to deliver in the theatre as a precaution, given the distance between the birthing suite and operating theatre at Mackay Base Hospital.

However, the best-laid plans often go awry. After receiving what turned out to be a "patchy" epidural, Cassie found herself experiencing excruciating pain concentrated in her right groin. What was expected to be a slow progression suddenly accelerated.

"They managed to get me to lie down, and the midwife said to me, 'Look, you're probably not going to be much further past three and a half centimeters. Looking at the screens. You're only having two contractions every 10 minutes. You're not even in active labor. But we just need to check.'

"I will never forget the midwife's voice when she said, 'Okay, so we're 10 plus one,'" Cassie said. "And then really, all hell broke loose from there."

What happened next could only be described as a scene from a medical drama. Cassie, already crowning with Charlie, had to be rushed through the public corridors of Mackay Hospital to reach the theatre.

"Here I am legs up, crowning with my boy, Charlie, and getting run through these corridors while I am still having these intense contractions," she describes. "I'm turning to Scott, and I'm saying to him, 'They can all see, they can all see what's going on.'"

He tried to comfort her and tell her they couldn't see a thing.

"It was a couple of weeks after he said to me, when we were reliving it all, "Yeah, they probably could see some stuff, but I wasn't going to tell you that then and there."

The battle for Luna.

While Charlie's birth proceeded smoothly, his sister Luna had other plans. What was supposed to be a straightforward delivery became increasingly complex as doctors struggled to locate and safely deliver the second twin.

Three different doctors attempted to locate Luna, whose position had changed from breech leg-first delivery to head-first. The situation became critical when, during an attempted foot extraction, Luna's amniotic sac broke and her heart rate plummeted into the 60s.

"I could see the panic in [the doctor's] eyes when the monitors were going off saying that baby was in distress," Cassie recalls of the senior consultant's final attempt.

"We had to do the emergency C section straight away, as Luna's life was in danger."

Cassie had to undergo an emergency C-Section to save Luna. Image: Supplied.

When Luna was finally delivered, her Apgar score was just two — barely above the lowest possible score of one.

"They put her straight into the incubator. Her pediatric team said, 'We need to go now.' They turned to Scott, who was right by my side, and they said to him, 'Dad, are you coming?' He turned to me, and he said, 'What do you want me to do?'"

In a moment of maternal sacrifice, Cassie insisted Scott go with their struggling newborn while she remained in theatre.

"And I said, "Go, go with them," she said.

"It made me feel, obviously, a big pang of jealousy that he was with them, but I knew that they weren't alone, and they had one of us there, and that was the most important thing to me," she says.

After a few hours in recovery, Cassie became desperate to see her babies. When asked if there was any chance if she would rest and sleep without them she said, "No chance."

Eventually, Cassie was allowed down to see her beautiful children, even Luna who was still in the incubator. Soon they were discharged, happy and healthy.

Luna was in the NICU at first but was soon discharged. Image: Supplied.

Today, looking back on their dramatic entry into the world, Cassie sees her twins as nothing short of miraculous.

"Twins are an absolute blessing," she reflects. "There are days that you think, 'How on earth am I going to survive another day raising these twins, because they're just crazy,' but other days where you look at them and just think it's a miracle that they are here."

Little Charlie and Luna side by side. Image: Supplied.

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Feature: Supplied.