Little Mix alum Jesy Nelson brought home her twin daughters, Ocean and Story, after nearly a month in the hospital.
The “Bad Thing” singer shared a photo of the twins via Instagram on Saturday, June 14, to commemorate her 34th birthday. She announced, “My babies made it home for my birthday.”
The adorable picture shows Nelson sitting next to Ocean and Story as they rest comfortably in their bassinet. (Nelson shares her twin daughters with boyfriend Zion Foster.)
Nelson confirmed in March that she was experiencing pre-stage TTTS (twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome), which can cause “complications that come with having identical twins.” In her case, Nelson’s doctors were monitoring her in case the unborn babies were “living off one placenta.”
“The types of twins we’re having are monochorionic diamniotic [MCDA] twins and with that, normally, most twins will have two placentas that they feed off of,” she wrote via Instagram at the time. “When you have monochorionic diamniotic twins, they can lead to lots of different complications.”
She assured fans, “I’m being monitored very closely. I have to go be scanned twice a week. The current situation that we’re in at the moment is that every time I’ve gone it gets a little bit worse.”
Nelson underwent a procedure to rectify the issue and ultimately spent three months in the hospital before giving birth. On March 31, Nelson celebrated Mothering Sunday in her native U.K. by sharing a positive pregnancy update.
“We just wanted to give you guys an update, as we know it’s been a while,” she told Instagram followers. “I don’t know if you can see, but we are still in hospital, I’ve been recovering, but we have some amazing news. The TTTS has cleared up; the operation was a success, which is just absolutely incredible. We are so, so lucky to have the most amazing doctors.”
The former Little Mix member clarified that she was remaining hospitalized for the time being because she was still so far from her due date.
“Basically, the situation we’re in now is my cervix is very, very short, so I can’t leave the hospital because my waters could break at any point and I’m still very, very early,” she mentioned. “I can’t leave the hospital until I’m a certain amount of weeks, so every week we’re just like, ‘Please, please, please, stay in there!’”
Foster, 26, assured his partner, “One week at a time, but we’re in such a blessed position to even be able to make this video.”
After three months in the hospital, the couple shared the wonderful news on May 18 that their “beautiful baby girls decided to come at 31 weeks plus 5 days.”
“It all happened so quickly, but we are so blessed that they are here with us, healthy and fighting strong! We’ve never felt more in love,” they wrote via a joint Instagram message.
Unfortunately, the twins had to spend three weeks in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) because of the complications from their high-risk births. Nelson poignantly acknowledged in a Instagram post on May 25 that “nothing or no one will ever be able to prepare you as a parent for NICU.”
Nelson proudly paid tribute to her newborn daughters’ resilient spirits after their difficult journey into the world.
“It’s the most scary overwhelming feeling of emotions not being able to feel like you can protect your babies,” she recalled. “Naturally, as a mother, you just want to hold them and comfort them when they cry but you can’t because there are what feels like a million wires coming out of them and tubes and masks in the way with people poking and prodding them it breaks your heart into a million pieces. But slowly as the days go by and they get stronger and wires start to come away, moments like this feel like a dream.”
“Having them reunited for the first time ever today was the most magical feeling I will never be able to describe,” she concluded. “The strongest little girls I’ve ever known who really do have the most inspiring story to tell.”
