Back our blanket appeal and help premature babies like Harper and Poppy this Christmas

JADE Ditchfield will be celebrating her own Christmas miracle – having her two little girls home for the ­festivities.

Last December, twins Harper and Poppy were in incubators fighting for their lives after being born 16 weeks early.

Today Jade, 30, told The Sun on ­Sunday: “There were days when I was terrified that they wouldn’t make it.

"I always knew the next day was not a given. But I couldn’t give up on them. I was adamant I had to fight for them.

“They have been through things that most adults couldn’t even contemplate. 

"They were in hospital for 133 days before we could bring them home and then they were still hooked up to oxygen fighting for every breath.

“This Christmas I am going all out. I am normally a bit of a Scrooge but it’s going to be magical — they deserve it.”

The twins were due on March 26.

But Jade was rushed to Sheffield Teaching Hospital and at 3pm on December 5, surrounded by 16 medics on The Jessop Wing, she gave birth to Harper, weighing 1lb 3oz.

Poppy then arrived 11 hours later, coming in at 1lb 2oz.  They were both put on ventilators.

Jade and her partner Richard Thompson, a support worker, spent weeks on busy neonatal wards yet Jade, from Halifax, said she often felt lonely.

She explained: “You feel so isolated from the world.  You feel guilty if you put your feet up and leave your little babies on their own for a few ­minutes.

"There are very few people who can truly understand how strange it is being in a premature baby ward.

“You are constantly overwhelmed by joy, sadness, grief or fear. It can make you or break you. 

“I was so lucky to have Ricky there by my side. It would have been so much harder without him.”

That is why, today, Jade is backing the Sun on Sunday’s Knit A Lot, Help A Tot appeal so YOU, our kindhearted readers, can help hundreds of parents and newborns — just like Jade and her daughters — around the UK.