Oliver's story

Oliver

'Normal' baby grows aren't always the easiest to get onto a baby, I remember my friend and I babysitting for my friends 4 month old Nephew and even though, between us, we had a fair few G.C.S.E's, several A levels and were just about to to graduate with honours degrees, the poppers on a baby grow very nearly defeated us, throw in canullas, feeding tubes and wires and the simple task of dressing your baby becomes a whole new challenge, even for the seasoned professional parent.

This time last year I was a Mum of 2 boys and was just about to find out a third baby was on the way, I considered myself a seasoned professional parent, I'd changed hundreds of nappies, perfected the art of dressing a baby without really thinking about it and poppers were now a doddle, never in a million years did I imagine what I would be faced with in just a few months.

All was going well until I was 30 weeks pregnant and then it all went wrong when my waters broke, they did break in the hospital car park which was handy but little did we know we were getting on a 5 week emotional rollercoaster ride with an uncertain end.

I had to have steroid injections to give Oliver’s lungs a boost as the Dr’s expected him to arrive within 48hrs however Oliver had other ideas and thankfully stayed put.

Then followed 5 weeks that pretty much followed the pattern of; home from hospital, waters break, back in hospital, home from hospital, waters break, back in hospital etc etc until I reached 35wks, the doctors decided enough was enough and issued Oliver with an eviction notice, Oliver, however, had a few more tricks up his sleeve and decided that turning from head down to breech to transverse on a regular basis would confuse the doctors and having heartbeat decelerations would scare everyone half to death, he then threw in a major heartbeat deceleration which had the alarms going off, staff running in from every direction and Mummy heading off down the corridor for an emergency c section.

We thank every lucky star in the sky that Oliver arrived safe and well, he had to go to the special care baby unit (SCBU) for one night before being put on what they call transitional care, this meant he was allowed to stay on the ward with me for most of the day but going up to SCBU every 6 hours for monitoring and to be given his intravenous antibiotics.

The first day of Oliver's life are rather hazy, I wasn't well enough to do anything for him so the midwives looked after him, when I first saw him in his plastic 'bubble' crib he had been dressed by the midwife but his canulla, tubes and splint meant one arm was in and one arm was out of his babygrow, he looked so uncomfortable, later in the day a babygrow with a sleeve big enough to get on properly was found but I was terrified of catching his canulla while dressing him and we soon went back to one arm in and one arm out.

I really wish we had had access to a Pop N Grow babygrow in the hospital, it would have made things just a little better, Oliver would have been comfortable and that would have meant a lot.

Fast forward to today and Oliver is one day off being 5 months old, the memories of last summer are still with us but Oliver is doing great, he is such a happy baby you would never guess the start to his life had been such a rocky road.

So I would just like to say thank you to all the staff at the Royal Gwent hospital, Newport you are amazing people who do an amazing job in difficult circumstances, by being involved with Pop N Grow I hope I can help other parents and babies who are facing difficult times, I am trying to give a little back to the people who gave us so much.

*** Oliver is doing his bit for Pop N Grow by entering a cute baby competion, if he wins he will be donating the baby gift hamper prize to Pop N Grow for their February auction, to vote for Oliver please follow this link  Vote for Oliver  and click 'like' under Oliver's photo, Thank you ***

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