I write this with a heavy heart because I know not everyone gets to take their baby home! We got to bring our little miracles home, it may have been on day 82 and day 108 of life but we got to bring our babies home!
‘High-risk pregnancy’ are three words every doctor and nurse would say after looking at my file..
type 1 diabetes, uterine abnormality, single kidney, high risk for preeclampsia. I knew pregnancy wasn't going to be smooth sailing but they were much more wild than I could have ever imagined!
My pregnancy in 2019 was my second pregnancy after a blighted ovum miscarriage at 13 weeks. So when I got to 8 weeks and started bleeding I thought it was all over. But thankfully the pregnancy continued and I got to 13 weeks, and my first appointment at the high-risk diabetes clinic. Information overload, seeing multiple doctors, a dietitian, and nurses took a good part of the day.
Having 2 uterus’ meant I was high risk for early labour and shortening cervix. So I was put on progesterone and monitored fortnightly. I cruised for a number of weeks until about 27 weeks and after a few days, I noticed the baby movements being different and less frequent. It was a Thursday I was concerned but I had a 28 weeks scan booked in for the Friday afternoon.
Traveling home from work on Thursday I noticed a missed call and voicemail- it was the hospital asking if I could come in for an 8 am scan instead of the 2:30 pm scan - I was unable to contact the hospital as it was after-hours but we decided to go in for the earlier appointment even though we hadn't confirmed it.
We arrived for the ultrasound, and almost immediately they had detected something wasn’t right. They sent us off for a CTG scan and with no improvement after an hour they performed another ultrasound. This time they pushed and prodded our little one to see if he’d move and with no success they decided he’d be better off out.
It was around 10:30 am, by this point the doctor had told us they were planning on an emergency C-Section to give our little one the best chance of survival. My placenta had stopped working
I was given steroids to help the baby’s lungs and magnesium sulfate for the baby’s brain development. After another hour of no change, they decided it was time to get him out. It was around 12 o’clock at this stage they prepped me and my husband for surgery and we waited for the operating room to be cleared.
By 1:03 pm Our baby boy (Oscar Werner) was born, 1.5 hours before our scheduled scan. Our story could have had a very different ending…
Here began our first NICU journey.
69 Days at Rpa
13 days at St. George
Surfactant doses, 8 weeks of CPAP, high flow, multiple rounds of antibiotics, caffeine shots, blue lights, kangaroo care cuddles, and 1 mL of my milk and increasing as he tolerated it. Every day was the same, cuddles, pump, cuddles, more pumping, drive home pump, and prepare for the next day to do it all again! Leaving him each day was one of the hardest things we have had to do. Then finally home on 4 March 2020 with a happy healthy tiny baby on his due date and our wedding anniversary!
We learned lots in our 82 days - little did we know we would be needing this knowledge again.
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