When I found out I was pregnant I was so scared. By 8 weeks I had a bleed and found out I developed allergies to 4 foods. By 12 weeks I had developed Hyperemesis Gravidarum and from then until a week after I had her, I had suffered from this.

I was diagnosed as high risk around 12 weeks. By 16 weeks I was told I had extremely low iron and also hypoglycaemia.

By 20 weeks, heading in for the gender and anatomy scan, having them firstly measure her head and measuring 5-7 weeks behind and being told to come back in 5 weeks. Going back at 25 weeks I was super nervous that something would be wrong- we found out she was only measuring 20 weeks and my due date changed. I found this odd as I knew my dates. We found out she was a girl. We were then diagnosed with IUGR.

Some time went by and I went into hospital with early labour, I was swabbed and told I had CMV and they were very worried - it was very detrimental to bub.

By 25 weeks, I was told to do 2x weekly checks on Mondays and Wednesdays and we did this for 10 weeks.
At one of the checks, it was Monday 22 July 2019, her heart rate went up and down on the CTG and I was sent for an emergency scan. At this scan she was estimated to be 1.6kg, she was still quite behind.. there was horrible blood flow and horrible fluid volume.

I was immediately admitted to the birthing suite at Tamworth and the following morning I was told I’d be flown to John Hunter the Wednesday morning. I was monitored.

By the time Wednesday came and I was flown to JHH, I was told I would have a caesarean as things weren’t looking good. They didn’t recommend a natural birth as they said the stress may cause still birth, so of course I went by the professionals, and I am so glad I did.

Lola was born via caesarean around lunch time of 24 July 2019. I am so grateful Lola is here today.

Lola spent 4 days in NICU at JHH, then we were flown back to Tamworth in SCN for 24 days (28 days in hospital, total). I was booked into RMH and was able to visit her whenever I wanted which I am so grateful for. Lola was on a feeding tube most of the hospital stay.

Today, Lola is diagnosed with epilepsy, hypotonia, a chromosome deletion (come to find out that was passed on through myself, and I have the same deletion), and she is also failure to thrive.

Lola and I are both lucky enough to get help through NDIS. Lola gets support with OT, speech, physio, and dietitian and has a lot of issues as far as weight and feeding (as well as aspiration) which are being monitored closely.