Elis' early arrival

I begin with an apology as some of you may not have been aware that I was pregnant in the first place, so to find out that Glyn and I now have a son called Elis may come as a bit of a surprise! The thing is, things started going a little wrong in the pregnancy in March and then went from bad to worse, so we weren't sure what the outcome would be. Anyway, he wasn't due until the end of September, so we thought we had plenty of time...

I was in and out of hospital a few times from March when I was 13 weeks pregnant. I then went in on April 26th and stayed there until I was discharged on July 8th, almost three weeks after Elis was born. I had eventually been diagnosed as having placenta previa, which is where the placenta covers the cervix and can lead to bleeding (which it certainly did) and requires delivery via caesarian section to keep both mum and baby safe (which in our case, we didn't). I was getting progressively worse during my stay in hospital and had seven blood transfusions to try to combat the anaemia and got to the stage where I was confined to a horizontal position in bed (although the hospital did get me a special pressure relieving mattress!) I was even taken for my ultrasound scans still in bed. Fortunately, throughout the weeks of blood loss, the baby's heartbeat remained relatively unchanged and the professionals went from predicting that the pregnancy wouldn't last to believing that perhaps we might just make it.

Just to compound the issue though, the scans also showed that the baby had barely enough amniotic fluid to sustain its lung development (and certainly too little to get a good view of what sex it was, although they did think it was a boy).

When we finally made it to 24 weeks and the baby was technically 'viable', we had had several discussions with the paediatricians regarding the possible outcomes should something happen and the baby need to be delivered at that stage in the pregnancy. I was also given several doses of steroids to help the baby's lung development just in case of an early delivery.

To cut a long story short, after a few false alerts, I went into labour without anyone recognising it. Somehow, Elis had managed to squeeze under the placenta and it was only when I could feel him coming that the midwives sprung into action and he was delivered breech less than five minutes after I arrived on the labour ward at 01:59 on Monday 18th June. Glyn had been telephoned and told to come in as I was in a lot of pain but unfortunately he didn't make it to hospital in time for the birth. In fact, when he arrived at 02:15, the theatre was empty except for me and no one had told him what had happened so it came as a complete shock when I told him he'd missed the birth and that we had a son. We named him Elis Morgan Rhisiart there and then in the theatre. It was some time later that someone came to tell us that he weighed 820g (1lb 13oz) and that although he wasn't breathing when he was born, he was now on a ventilator with a tube into his lungs and the paediaticians were trying to stabilise him.

The picture became clearer later in the day when Glyn took me in a wheelchair to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to see him. As well as the tube to help him breath, he was having phototherapy to treat jaundice and the severe bruising to his lower body from the breech delivery and was receiving a raft of medications to combat other problems including stabilising his blood pressure, which was a problem during the first few days. Although tiny, he still looked bigger than I expected him to be when I first saw him. Having gone through weeks and weeks of uncertainty during the pregnancy, finally he was here and we could see him, but the uncertainty was to continue. At least without the placenta, I was able to start getting up again and begin to rebuild my own strength.