Alfie born at 34+3 weeks

Lives in Cambridgeshire, Delivered at Hinchingbrooke hospital



I fell pregnant last year (3rd pregnancy),near enough straight after having sadly lost our second baby at 8 weeks. I suffered quite severe morning sickness, which I took as a good signafter having previously lost baby 2, however after some light bleeding at 10 weeks, and again at 12 weeks, I ended up having a couple of extra scans early on. Both scans showed everything was fine and baby was doing well.The pregnancy carried on as normal until the day we came home from holiday (around 18 weeks). I got up to our little boy in the night and thought I had felt I was losing fluid when the baby moved. It happened twice that night but there was no noticeable fluid loss and baby was still moving.



I decided to put it to the back of my mind unless something else happened. We went for our 20 week scan two weeks later only to find the fluid around the baby was very low (around 4.5cm.) The registrar could find no evidence that my waters had broken, however booked me in to see the consultant the following week and confirmed that if my waters had of gone, the baby stood no chance of surviving. The night before my consultants appointment, I felt the sensation of losing fluid again, however this time I was losing a lot and it was very red in colour. We rushed through to the labour ward (at this point I was 20 weeks, 3 days). They decided to start me on a two week course of antibiotics and keep me over night until my consultant appointment. The next day the consultant carried out our scan and said there was still a tiny amount of fluid around the baby and our best bet now was to go home, sit tight and have a very low threshold for coming back in to hospital as the likelyhood was I would miscarry and it would happen quickly.She gave us no prognosis, other than to say it was not good and they would expect me to deliver within 48 hours.



She said we would review the pregnancy on a weekly basis. This started the beginning of our little routine, home, resting, not leaving the house, once a week trundling off to hospital to be scanned, once a week, normally a sunday/monday night I would have bleeding and head off into hospital to have baby monitored/speculum/registrar tell us baby wouldn't make it. At 23+4 weeks we met with a paediatric consultant who told us our baby stood no chance. She informed us the likely hood of our little baby being able to breathe was very low, if he did survive he would have no end of complications, needing oxygen for years, CP etc etc. She advised us not to have baby resuscitated before 28 weeks and that they wouldn't give me steroids until 26 weeks.



At 24 weeks I went in with bleeding and they decided to start steroids earlier than planned. At 25 weeks I had the worse episode of bleeding so far, our local hospital is unable to take babies below 30 weeks gestation and so they decided to transfer me to the nearest NICU with space, this turned out to be UCH London, over 100 miles from home and my husband and 2yr old son. I was transferred out at 3am on my own as I sent hubby home to be with our little boy, with blue lights. A week later, with no sign of labour they sent me home in a taxi.



Our consultant advised me to take bleeding as part of our 'normal' and to only go in if something changed, i.e. pains etc. I was booked for a C section at 34 weeks, however at 32+3 I woke up in the night feeling uncomfortable. within half an hour, by the time I got to hospital the pain was unbearable and the babies heart rate was dropping with every contraction. They decided to rush me straight in and deliver.



Due to complications I wasn't terribly aware of what was happening in theatre, however I know that Alfie cried when he was born. Something neither me nor my husband ever thought would happen! They bought him over to show us we had another son! Alfie weighed 4lb 4oz and had a remarkably smooth SCBU journey, 8 days on/being weaned off of CPAP and on/off light therapy for jaundice and then 8 days establishing breast feeding before he came home, 16 days old fully breast fed and off of all oxygen! He is now 7 months old, meeting all of his milestones, around 16lb and truly a miracle.