From the age of 15, I had been told the chances of having children wouldn’t be likely. At the age of 23, I was starting to feel sick everyday, so took the test – 2 positive tests later and a doctor’s visit, it was confirmed – I was 10 weeks pregnant. The whole pregnancy was uneventful, morning sickness right throughout the pregnancy, multiple times a day.
On Sunday, 8 April at 6pm my waters broke. I went straight into full contractions with no build up. Bearing in mind she was only 34w 6d gestation, still not knowing what was going on, we decided to go to the hospital just to see.
On the way to the hospital I was feeling the urge to push, we made it to the emergency department where we were met by a nurse that took us straight up to birthing. My midwife was on holiday so I had her back-up midwife who I had only meet once prior to this day. The midwife then said that I was already fully dilated and the baby would be here within the next half hour. From there it went downhill, the midwife was far from pleasant and at one point got told I was being stupid, she told my partner to turn his phone off and continued with do you want this baby born or not. The midwife’s phone and the nurse’s phone were both going off at this point, and the main problem was that the midwife was not communicating with me how far I had to go, it wasn’t until my partner said there is the head that I knew she was close and gave it the last push. Chloe was born at 7:40pm on Sunday, 8 April weighing 5lb 3.5oz.
She was taken away as she was born stunned and I only got maybe a minute cuddle till she was struggling to breath. Looking through the notes at this time she was resuscitated and was put on CPAP and was put in an incubator. Chloe was on CPAP for the first 6 hours of her life and was on antibiotics for the first 2 days. On Day 3 Chloe was transferred to a hospital that was closer to our home, and the stay was pretty uneventful except she wasn’t putting on the weight, at 2 weeks old she was discharged from the hospital, still not at her birth weight.
For the next month she was assisted to do number 2s, as she was unable to stimulate the breast to feed properly, but since then she still is small for her age but is doing everything she should. She is now 10.5 months and is nearly walking, looking back its amazing what NICU and SCBU do for the babies and parents in their care.
