David and Rachel are like any other young couple, interested in fashion and music and socialising with friends. But they share more than this. Both were premature babies and gave their mums the scariest moments at the start of their lives. FIONA TARRANT reports on this unusual pair...

David Watts was nicknamed Bright Eyes when he was born 13 weeks premature, weighing just 2lbs 10oz.

His mum Shirley said: "It was what the doctors and nurses called him because he put up such a fight to live and he had such intense, big, brown eyes."

Today, David is a strapping 18-year-old with a dream of becoming an architect.

But when he was born, Shirley could only hope and pray that he'd survive. David was rushed to the John Radcliffe's special care baby unit in Oxford after his emergency birth at the Horton Hospital in Banbury.

"My waters had broken at home and they took me into hospital. Then I prolapsed and David's arm came out into the birth canal, so they had to do a Caesarean.

"By the time I woke up from the anaesthetic, David had already gone to Oxford," said Shirley, 41, who lives in Fielden Road, Ducklington, with husband Colin, David, and 19-year-old daughter Vicki. As David fought to survive, Shirley struggled with a year-old baby at home and constant trips to the hospital.

"I didn't like all the tubes but I knew that without them he wouldn't survive. He had open-heart surgery when he was eight days old to close a valve, and he was in an incubator.

"It was heartbreaking. I couldn't hold him properly. I had to put my arms through the portholes to touch him."

But David did survive. He went home when he was four months old and 7lbs - the weight of an average newborn.

"People couldn't believe it when they asked his age. I'm sure they thought I didn't feed him properly," said Shirley.

Although the next few years passed normally, David did have another problem due to his low birth weight.

"I had tremendous care from the hospitals in both Banbury and Oxford and David was checked regularly but when he was nearly three, I had terrible trouble feeding him," said Shirley.

At the age of three, he wouldn't eat and was surviving on tiny amounts of food and vitamin drops. Said Shirley: "I took him to the hospital and they did some checks. They found he had 14 kidney stones in his left kidney.

"They operated and had to remove it. They said the operation should take an hour if only one kidney was damaged, or longer if the other one - which had a shadow on it - was affected.

"That was the longest hour of my life but luckily David pulled through."

Although he is now deaf in one ear from one of his ops, David has suffered no other ill-effects.

"He couldn't play contact sports like rugby and football because there was a fear of damaging his remaining kidney, but it hasn't affected him. He's very musical and plays both the piano and guitar," said Shirley.

"He's just a normal 18-year-old. He's got loads of friends and he's enjoying himself at college. I wouldn't swap him for the world."

THE TINY TRUTH

David was so tiny when he was born that he had to wear dolls' clothes in hospital. He was washed daily with moistened cotton buds.

Said Shirley: "They seemed huge because he was so small."

In England and Wales in 1996, there were 649,489 babies born. Of these, 7.3 per cent weighed less than 2,500 grams and 1.2 per cent less than 1,500 grams - the same figure as in 1995.

For every 1,000 babies born weighing less than 2,500 grams, 50 died. And for every 1,000 babies born weighing less than 1,500 gramms, 227 died. RACHEL'S STORY

Rachel Winstone weighed in at just 2lbs 13oz when she was born in July, 1970.

Eight weeks early, she arrived at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford after her mum Carol developed pre-eclampsia.

Carol, 48, of Wilcote View, North Leigh, recalled: "I was almost 33 weeks pregnant but I had high blood pressure and toxaemia, so I had to have a Caesarean.

"It was a traumatic time. The motherly bond, which usualy happens as soon as you've had a baby, didn't really happen then. Rachel was being treated for jaundice and was then in an incubator.

"I was allowed to change her nappies and feed her but she had tubes connected and a bleep, so it was hard.

"I was recovering from the Caesarean too, so the bond had to happen a bit later."

Carol and her husband John got lots of support from family and friends who rallied round during the five weeks Rachel was in hospital.

"She was a real little fighter. I was thrilled when I went in one day to feed her and the doctor said I could take her home. After that, it was no problem at all."

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.