When Hannah Marshall signed up for dating app Bumble, she got double what she bargained for.
Not only did she find love with Rowan Marshall, but the pair are now the proud parents of two sets of twins born within 17 months.
Hannah, 35, joined Bumble in 2019 after the breakdown of a two-year relationship. But she said: “I was looking for a date. I never expected to find my soulmate and two sets of twins!
“Rowan and I have the same surname too, even though we aren’t married, so we were definitely meant to be together.”
Make-up artist Hannah told how the dating app “certainly didn’t disappoint”
She said: "Rowan jumped out at me. He was just my type so it was a quick ‘swipe right’.
“He messaged me back and we started chatting but were both busy with work so it was nearly two weeks later when we decided to meet up.
“We played pool and had a really chilled date. Rowan was great fun.”
The first date was such a success that Rowan and Hannah were soon an item – and they were delighted when twins Iris and Esme arrived in February last year.
But despite having no history of twins in their families, the couple were in for an even bigger shock when Hannah got pregnant a second time and was told she was expecting twins yet again.
Little Zoey and Finn arrived at the end of July.
Recalling her first pregnancy, Hannah said she started to feel “odd” while she and Rowan were at a music festival.
“My period was a couple of days late and I felt different,” she said.
“I couldn’t put my finger on it but I just didn’t feel the same.”
At first, Hannah ruled out being pregnant because she had suffered a molar pregnancy – where an egg fails to fertilise properly – 10 years earlier.
She had needed chemotherapy for the condition, which can cause malignant or benign tumours.
Hannah said: “It’s very rare and mine was even rarer because I had treatment to try and get rid of it, but it didn’t work so I had to have chemotherapy for it. It was exhausting and quite aggressive.
“I wasn’t sure I could ever get pregnant so I was careful about having sex sometimes, but not others.”
After taking a pregnancy test, Hannah was stunned to discover she was indeed expecting.
“I was shocked when it was positive,” she said.
“I put it to the back of my mind and thought it must be a mistake. But the next day, I did another test, just to put my mind at rest, and it was positive again.”
When the couple went for their first scan a few weeks later, they were in for a double shock.
Hannah, of Exeter, Devon, said: “The sonographer ran the scanner over my stomach and said she could see two heartbeats.
“I was in complete shock, I couldn’t take it in – but there they were, the two little heartbeats pumping away on the screen.
“Rowan couldn’t believe it either. We’d only met a few months before on Bumble and here I was, already pregnant with twins.”
The girls were born at the Royal Exeter Hospital, with Iris weighing 5lbs and Esme at 5lb 6oz.
Hannah said: ‘It was such an emotional moment when I held them in my arms for the first time. I couldn’t believe I was a mum – I thought it would never happen for me.”
Hannah and Rowan, an operations manager, settled in to the new parents’ exhausting routine of feeding and sleepless nights.
Then, in January, Hannah found out that she was pregnant again… with a second set of twins.
She said: “Rowan and I had said that we would like another baby one day, but definitely not as soon as this!
“I did one pregnancy test and then another straight afterwards, just to make sure there hadn’t been a mistake. But there it was again – the positive result on the test stick.
“There was no mistaking that I was pregnant again."
Hannah went for an early scan and sure enough, the sonographer saw two heartbeats on the screen.
“She said to me that it was the first time she had seen twins on a scan but I told her it wasn’t mine and I’d already given birth to one set,” Hannah said.
“She thought I was joking with her.
“I honestly thought I would never be able to get pregnant naturally, and yet I’d fallen pregnant with two sets of twins in just 12 months!”
Life has certainly changed for the couple since the rapid expansion of their family.
Hannah said: “We’ve had to get a bigger house and a bigger car as we suddenly have four children.
“When we told our friends and family, they were completely stunned. They thought we were mad having another set of twins.”
