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Dawn from Nottingham's story.
I was 30 weeks pregnant to the day. Lay in bed feeling
a bit weird. Then felt a bit wet, but not sure what it
was, maybe just a bit of leakage, I'd heard pregnant
women had problems with bladder control. Tried to get
back to sleep but couldn't, eventually called the
hospital around 5 a.m. They told me to come in just in
case, but it was probably nothing.
I woke my husband but said it was probably nothing, so
he got a shower, whilst I stuffed some things in a
bag, just in case. No preparation as we weren't
expecting anything for a few weeks at least.
Drove off to the hospital, eventually got to see a
nurse who told me to pee into a container and then sat
on a bed for a while.
Then a doctor turned up, who was literally falling
asleep whilst talking to me. She had a quick feel and
then all hell broke loose. She told me I would have to
have a caesarean as I was 7 cm dilated and if they
didn't get the babies out quick they were coming on
their own. She seemed to think as they were both so
small and both breech this wasn't a good idea.
Suddenly I was being fitted with monitors, told I was
having contractions I couldn't feel, injected with
steroids and the doctor disappeared. My husband had
gone to make a phone call and tells me the doctor
appeared issuing orders, 'get me a theatre, get me an
anaesthetist now' etc.
In no time at all I was sitting on a theatre bed being
given an epidural and then having an anaesthetist spray
me with water trying to work out how far up my body
I'd lost feeling as the doctor stood over me, knife
poised. Fortunately by this time she appeared to have
woken up somewhat.
At 7.40 and 7.42 the girls were born (extracted)
weighing 2lb 10 and 3lb 3. I saw them for a few
seconds before they were whisked away to intensive
care. Whilst they seemed to take an absolute age
putting me back together again.
They took me to see the girls again briefly in their
incubators before they took me up to a ward. I think
one of the worst nights of my life was that first one
on the ward, in a side room, but still able to hear
all those mothers and new born babies, whilst I
couldn't hold mine and didn't even know how they were.
My husband told me, sometime later, that the hospital
staff had told him we should choose names quickly as
it made the grieving process easier. They took
Polaroid's as soon as they were in the incubators
because this may be the only photo you get.
Fortunately they didn't say this to me at the time.
We spent 7 weeks in hospital in total, going through
Intensive care, high dependency, low dependency,
ventilators, monitors, blood transfusions, drips, tube
feeding, milk expressing, etc.
It all worked out well in the end though. Now we have
2 beautiful healthy 3 year old girls.
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