In her airy living room with views over the south-west Wales countryside, Sammie Bond, heavily pregnant, lies on a sofa as midwife Sophie Barry-Richards places a monitoring device on her stomach and is rewarded by the rhythmic thump of a healthy heartbeat.
Almost immediately, another, just a little faster, can be heard — and Bond’s seven-year-old son Cadno, playing nearby, is briefly transfixed by this prenatal connection to his new twin siblings.
It is a heartwarming yet commonplace scene repeated daily in homes and healthcare facilities the world over. But in Bond’s case, its significance goes beyond offering reassurance that her rollercoaster pregnancy — a wrenching miscarriage, followed by the discovery that the lost baby had been a triplet and two other foetuses had survived — is now on track.