Where it all began...The birth story of our 27 weeker Lilah Grace
“OK Danielle, you have already dilated 1cm, you are in labour, and your baby is on the way…”
Finding out I was pregnant after a blissful holiday to Bali was an absolute shock, but a delightful one, considering I had been told that my chances of falling pregnant were drastically reduced, with my rare cancer diagnosis and surgery only 18 months prior. It gave a whole new meaning to the words “Bali Belly.”
My now husband Roger and I decided that it was a gift from the universe and became instantly excited about the prospect of adding a little human to our family. Other than some mild morning sickness in the first trimester, my pregnancy was uneventful and dare I say, easy. I was working full time and renovating our 10acre property, so life was busy. I had booked a holiday to Darwin months before, planned for around 28 weeks, where I would not be heavily pregnant but far enough along to deserve a week of rest and relaxation. The thought of sunshine, my bestie and immersing myself in water for the week sounded like heaven.
It was Monday morning, 27th July 2015. I woke up mentioning to my husband that it felt like I had general period cramps overnight. The cramps were painful, which was not out of character for me. We both shrugged it off and thought “ok, perhaps this must be the beginning of Braxton Hicks?” I had only just started to feel our baby kicking a few weeks prior, which I was told was due to having an anterior placenta. So Roger left for work, and I went about my morning, frantically sending emails and finishing reports, before heading out to see clients. The cramps intensified to the point where I would have to stand up and stomp around (I had just started reading Birth Skills by Juju Sundin). I even got in the shower and the warm water alleviated the pain temporarily.
Before heading out the door, I started to time these painful cramps. They were coming every 10-15 minutes and would last about 30 seconds. Having a remarkably high pain threshold and an increasing desire to tie off loose ends for work, so I could leave for my holiday work free, I convinced myself that it must be a normal part of pregnancy, and down to Victor Harbour I went.
By about 1pm, things had really ramped up, every 5 minutes or so lasting about 1-5 minutes and I thought I better go to the hospital to double check I was okay to fly. After all, I did not need a mid-air disaster on my hands. By now, the cramps had intensified so much I could not speak. They were taking my breath away. I tried to ring Roger, just to give him the heads up, but he did not answer. Next, I tried my mum. I was driving flat out down the expressway, stopping for no one. I had planned a peaceful, low intervention water birth, but chatting to my mum, in between the worst pain I have ever experienced, I jokingly said “well if this is Braxton Hicks, I may have to rethink my birth plan” How on earth could labour be more intense than this?
I eventually made it up to the assessment clinic, waiting for the slowest lift in the world because the thought of climbing four flights of stairs seemed absolutely out of my reach by this point. No one was too stressed, after all, I had managed to drive and walk myself this far and I was only 27+5 weeks pregnant. All I could think of was how wonderful Darwin was going to be the next morning when I arrived.
As I was laying on a bed, with a monitor strapped onto my stomach waiting to be examined, I heard a lady next to me who was experiencing early contractions and they were telling her she was fine and to go home. I was laying there feeling a bit stupid. They would surely roll their eyes at me, tell me everything was normal and send me on my way.
Without realising, I was gripping the bed and moaning and puffing loudly. A doctor stuck her head around the curtain and straight away looked concerned. Next minute she was by my side, started asking me questions about my pain and wanted to do a cervical examination. After checking my cervix, the doctor swiftly sat next to me on the bed, took a breath whilst holding my hand, looked at me straight and said “OK Danielle, your cervix has already dilated 1cm, you are in labour and your baby is on the way…”
I will never ever forget those words!!
After what seemed like an eternal silence, my only response was “oh no that’s not possible, I am supposed to be flying to Darwin in the morning.” Talk about denial! She said “I am sorry, you are not going anywhere. We are going to start some medication to try and slow this labour down, start some steroids for the baby’s lungs and some magnesium for the baby’s brain and try and buy as much time as we can.”
She rushed off to find an ultrasound machine and a whole lot of fuss ramped up around me. All the while, I still had not grasped the fact that my baby was indeed on the way. My head was still in the tropics, relaxing by the pool with a mocktail. Premature birth was not even in my vocabulary. I had never heard of NICU. I had considered all the possible things that could go wrong with pregnancy, but for some reason, premature birth was not one of them. No one ever talks about it. No one in my family had ever had an early baby. My closest friends all had textbook pregnancies and births. There must be some mistake?!
The doctor might as well have been speaking another language. Everything was muffled. I laid there alone, waiting to see a familiar face. I text Roger and said “um you need to get here NOW, our baby is coming” and I rang my mum again to tell her the news. Then the overwhelm set in. How do you possibly digest these unbelievable events unfolding before me?
The lovely doctor came back in for another assessment. I was now 5cm dilated, there was no stopping this baby! She did a scan to check the position of the baby and the next hurdle…our baby was laying transverse and tucked right up under the fundus. She informed me that there was no possible way to delivery this baby safely vaginally and that a C-section was going to be necessary. Of course, not just a regular caesarean, a classical C-section, where you are cut like an upside-down T. About as far from a relaxed water birth as you can get!
My mum walked into my room trying to hold back her tears. I had tried to stay as calm as possible but as soon as I said the words “I just really hope our baby is going to be ok” the flood gates opened. It was the first moment I had allowed myself to even consider that we could actually lose our precious bubba.
Then Roger walked through the door…
My instant wave of calm and comfort. My solid rock. I knew then just by looking at him, that everything was going to be okay. He was dressed in his scrubs, my mum and dad wished us luck and then I was wheeled into theatre.
After 3 attempts at my spinal, I layed there with Roger holding onto one hand and the midwife holding onto the other, waiting for everything to go numb, and hoping like hell it would hurry up! Then it was time to get our baby out. There was a huge team involved, headed by Dr Scott Morris, the most remarkable man we came to know! He was so calm and reassuring. The delivery team were yanking me all over the table. It was like someone rummaging around for luggage. It was so rough because our baby was so small and so stuck.
This little human that I had been growing for 27+5 weeks was lifted over the sheet for a fleeting second, all I saw was a black and blue face, tiny beyond words. The wave of overwhelming emotion actually took my breath away. My eyes welled up and they whisked our baby off to a table to start their assessments and intervention. I could not see much over my shoulder and finally I realised no one had told me what we had had. When I asked the nurse she replied, “put it this way, you are going to need lots of pink things.” Another huge surprise, we were so certain we were having a boy, you know, mother’s instinct and all! She let out a tiny cry, before being whisked away to the neonatal unit (NICU). My heart melted, I was in love like never before!
In recovery, we sat there, completely shell shocked. Welcome to parenthood! We did not even have a name picked yet, certainly not a girl’s name. We didn’t have a nursery set up, we didn’t own a capsule or car seat, we had not even finished our bathroom renovations at home. It was like living a dream and a nightmare all rolled into one.
It was there, that we decided one the most perfect name for our little girl. Lilah Grace, born 1055g and 36cm. She was small, she was stable, she was perfect. This is how our premature baby and NICU journey began!