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THE RE A LI T Y O F P RETE R M B I RT H No first time mother-to-be expects to find herself in the delivery suite after just 25 weeks of pregnancy.
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o first time mother-to-be expects to find herself in the delivery suite at the end of week 25 of her pregnancy but in October 2006 I found myself in the unfortunate situation of being one of those ladies who contribute towards the 4500 babies born too early in Ireland each year. My pregnancy had been marred with complications and suffering a placenta abruption—a condition that could cost us both our lives—resulted in a 160 mile dash to a tertiary unit where our daughter, Amelia Faith, was delivered by emergency caesarean section. She weighed just 780 grams.
The delivery room was deathly quiet as one faction of the army of medics fought desperately for nine minutes to breath life into Amelia’s tiny skeletal body and the other half fought to save my life. Unlike most births, I did not get to see or hold my daughter after her birth and the physical
and emotional emptiness that ensues following an emergency delivery was compounded by the stark reality that my daughter might not survive and might never know the loving touch of her mother in life.
24 hours after her birth, I was finally brought to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to meet Amelia. As I stood outside the ward and peered at the 10 incubators in the room—each housing a baby smaller than the next—it struck me that I didn’t even recognise my own flesh and blood. Nobody and nothing could have prepared me for the journey that lay ahead: the discharge home from hospital three days after birth without my child; the daily two hour commute each way to spend 14 hours sitting beside Amelia’s incubator
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