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Boy, how my two little miracles have grown ...

Michael Herbert
2/ 4/2008

THIS week 25 years ago Janet Entwistle received the news she had been waiting for – against all odds her twin sons were going to survive following weeks of uncertainty.

On February 24, 1983, Janet was rushed to the Royal Oldham Hospital having gone into labour 11 weeks early. There were not enough incubators at the Royal so she was immediately transferred to Salford’s Hope Hospital where she gave birth to twins just hours later.

Steven and Paul Entwistle, weighing in at 1lb 14oz and 2lb 9oz respectively, were the smallest babies ever to be born at Hope’s special maternity ward.

Janet, of Whitegate Avenue, Chadderton, told the Advertiser this week: "Due to their extremely small size the doctors said the boys had very little chance of survival. I was heartbroken."

Despite what she’d been told, Janet never gave up hope and kept a constant bedside vigil.

"I sat with them for hours on end and saw them both stop breathing twice.

"Each time the doctors managed to stabilise them. The early days were hard but in time they got stronger."

After a rollercoaster six weeks in Salford the twins were transferred – inside their incubators – to the Royal Oldham in order to be closer to family and friends.

However, they were not out of the woods yet and Steven, the smaller of the two, was still fairly weak. That April both of the boys gained weight, so much so that by the beginning of May Paul was ready to go home but he stayed on for another two weeks until Steven got stronger and they could both go home together.

On May 24 – three months to the day since they were born – the twins were allowed to return home to Chadderton with a very relieved Janet.

"Steven still had a breathing machine at home, but by then I knew he was going to be all right," she recalled.

"It was such a relief that they’d both made it through together," said Janet.

Today, the former Radclyffe School pupils have their own lives and personalities – Steven is a driver for a local firm and Paul is a customer advisor for a bank – but unsurprisingly the tight bond they formed in their infancy has not diminished.

Steven said: "We do a lot of things together like going to the gym, watching football and going for a drink.

"Paul is probably my best friend."

In the news, 25 years ago ...

• THE only hostel for women in Oldham was facing the threat of closure. The Oldham Single Homeless Project had massive debts with little hope of repaying them – meaning local battered wives and homeless women could have nowhere to go. Lesley Hutchings, manageress, hit out at Oldham Council for taking a hard line over an unpaid £1,000 rent bill at the same time that social services and housing departments were referring women to the hostel.
• AN OLDHAM firm was aiming to stem the flow of imported meats with its own brand of German sausage. Dunkerely Frozen Foods, of Springhead, claimed its new sausage, the Brat, was meatier, cheaper and better suited to British tastes than rival continental products and also hoped to market them abroad. Mike Dunkerely, managing director, said: "Oldham has already sold Swiss rolls to Switzerland and spaghetti to Italy. So why not German sausages to West Germany?"
• A COUNCILLOR warned that a derelict cinema was in danger of collapsing into a row of houses. Cllr Chris McCall said homes in Neville Street lay in the path of falling debris from the empty Picture Palace cinema and called for its demolition. "The cinema is in a shocking state especially inside – it has been on fire twice and parts of it are dangerous," he said. Council officers said permission was granted in 1978 for the site to be developed for housing, but the owners had not put the property on the market.
• OLDHAM Rugby League club was celebrating after securing a Premiership play-off place for the first time. They defeated Barrow 18-14 at Watersheddings after a powerful second-half display to notch their fifth consecutive victory. Green Virgo (two), Ray Ashton and Terry Bilsbury were the try-scoring heroes while Mick Parrish kicked three goals.
• A VICAR criticised Oldham Council in his parish magazine. The Rev David Hurst, of Christ Church, Friezland, criticised a decision to allow a building firm to develop land near the church that had at one time been set aside for burials. Space within the existing graveyard was running out and locals were upset they might not be able to be buried where they had lived all their lives. Rev Hurst wrote: "No wonder that violence and crime grows in society when the wishes of people are ignored by institutional authority."