I had high Blood pressure all throughout my pregnancy, no medications were helping at all. But I never felt sick or that something wasn’t right. I guess my body just adjusted to it being high.

From 30 weeks, I was having scans and CTG monitoring every second day.
2 days before Maisie was born, I had a scan and was told that she was measuring quite small, and the cord wasn’t working as well as it should. She was getting rushes of blood back through into her body. I was told to prepare for her to come in the next week, so go and buy some premmie clothes.

I got a call the next day to come in right away just to be sure with monitoring. They also take my BP at these appointments. It was 180/130. I was told I was not going home, and that I would be delivering that night or the next day.
I hadn’t even said goodbye to my toddler at home and was overcome with emotion.

It was decided that because it was a Sunday and I was being monitored around the clock, we could wait till Monday to deliver. It gave me a chance to get my toddler looked after earlier than expected and just find my bearings.

The next morning I was induced, the labour from waters being broken to her being her was 34 mins……..not fun!

She was good in colour and her Apgar score were 7 and 9. I went to have a shower and came back to see she was a shade of grey and cold. This was my third baby. She should have been pink and warm.

The midwife took her blood sugar and found it was at 0.2!
Emergency button was called, and she was whisked off to the bird nest (NICU/SCN)

She was stabilised, and we were taken to her room in the SCN. They also weighed her at a whopping 3650gm.

I was taken to a room to rest and recover after she was settled.
Next morning, I was woken by a barrage of doctors and told that she had had multiple episodes of apneas and bradycardia overnight and was now in a 1:1 care room in the NICU.

I rushed there and found my little baby covered in wires and tubes. We had appointments with doctors and social workers, and we had to give consent to genetic testing and a lumbar puncture. As a precaution, they had started her on antibiotics and they were taking her to check for seizure activity.

I was able to learn how to do her CARES and the first time I did it, she stopped breathing. Luckily the doctors were in the next room and were there within seconds.

She was cleared of everything they thought may have been wrong.
And day by day she got stronger. We just had to get her feeding.
2 long weeks passed and we were transferred to another hospital to their SCN closer to home.
Her feeding was excellent at this point and the only thing holding us back from going home was her weight gain, she lost a fair bit and they weren’t happy with how slowly she gained.

The decision was made a few days later to send us home as she seemed more settled when I was there and wasn’t as fussy when feeding.

Since then she has thrived, she’s actually tiny for her age given she was huge at gestation. We do have to take her for one more hearing test when she turns 3 just before kinder as she has suspected low-level hearing loss most likely caused by the antibiotics.

I am just happy that she is healthy. She’s the cheekiest little thing you would ever meet. Just turned 2.