Premature twins hospitalised after contracting a virus from their mum’s friend

Having to watch her six-week-old twins struggling to breathe in hospital is the last thing new mum-of-two Laura Willis, let alone any parent, ever imagined happening.

Young Harlow and Harper, who were born five weeks prematurely, were visited by friends of Ms Wilis and fell seriously ill just a short while later.

It seems that Ms Willis daughters have contracted Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) – an illness that isn’t harmful to adults, but can be lethal for children (RSV brings on mild, cold-like symptoms for adults, like a runny nose and a minor cough, in adults, but it’s particularly lethal for babies younger than six months’ old.

Ms Willis believes that that the girls caught it from one of her friends who came to visit the newborn babies.

First to get sick was Harper, who’s much smaller than her twin sister Harlow.

'I was terrified I thought I was going to lose [Harper] – the ambulance came straight away and by the time I got to the hospital she was attached to oxygen and a feeding tube,” she told The Daily Mail exclusively.

Her much-bigger twin sister Harlow fell ill soon after.

"By the time I got to the hospital, Harlow had stopped feeding, she was sick as well," Ms Wallis continue.

"It is heart-breaking and extremely scary to see them like this, I just sit next to their beds every day staring at the monitors.”

Ms Willis has since taken to Facebook to share her concern that (albeit loving) friends and family don’t listen when told to stay away from babies when unwell.

“Please, I urge anyone who has a cold not to go near babies,” she wrote, along with uploading pictures and videos of her two girls struggling to breathe.

“This is the result of someone with a cold coming near my babies…. One twin on oxygen and a feeding tube and another heading the same way.”

“So please if you are sick even with a minor cold do not go near babies.”