✨👶 1 in 10 babies are born prematurely 👶✨
My Gabriel was very eager to enter the world and i started leaking fluid at 29 weeks. After spending a few nights in hospital having steroids for his lungs just in case the medication to stop labour didn't work we were lucky enough that it did.
I had to release myself from the hospital as my husband was a military man and due to deploy and with 2 kids at home living on the other side of the country to our family i had no choice.
Each week meant 3 x scans to check amniotic fluid levels, blood tests and the stats of his survival if born. Die to all of this testing it did show his left kidney was dilated and wasn't working as it should which wouldn't be able to be looked at properly until born.
For the next 6 weeks, i got up, drove the kids to school and either went home to sit and do nothing as much as possible (i was on bed rest which impossible with 2 other kids) or off to the hospital for tests. It was filled with discussions with my doctors and myself to decide if it was worth the risk of trying to keep him in 1 more week or if we'd pushed our luck and avoided infection reaching him and it was time to say hello.
Due to the health issues with his kidney plus being breech and other complications i knew for a long time a c section was how he'd enter the world and after 6 long anxious weeks he was born with Dad still over seas at 35+0 @ 2840g - 40cms. Had he been full term he'd have been a little elephant haha.
I got a little kiss and then he was swept off to the NICU for all the help he needed.
We went through jaundice treatments having no sucking reflex (this isn't developed until 36th week of pregnancy) and mass weight loss, tube feeds, pumping schedules aka cow duty, bitchy nurses who were put in their place and 14 days of NICU and Special Care Nursery i finally brought my little fighter hm to meet his siblings (and my Mum who had to fly from Newcastle to Darwin to help look after Tiaran and Drae while i was in hospital with our little tadpole-too small to be a frog which was his favourite cuddle position).
Dad finally got to come home over his due date which meant he finally got to meet Daddy at 5 weeks old. I'll never forget the pain in my husbands eyes as he ad to say goodbye to us again and go back overseas not to return for 5 more months.
Fast forward to 2022 and my little Tadpole is now 15, he's 177cms tall (a few cms taller than me) and the most loving, caring kid and i grow more and more proud of him each and every day.
To all the other parents reminiscing on today, whether your little one is still very little or like mine, not so little anymore i say,
I see you
I hear you
I feel you 💞
