Mingo.Life

TRIGGER WARNING: PTSD, Childbirth, Neonatal Hospital, Premature Birth. Some people may find this upsetting.

T’was a cold and drizzly Friday afternoon in late November 2019. I was pacing the large, vacuous light blue corridors of the Royal Devon & Exeter Hospital’s Centre for Women’s Health. Emma had been in the labour ward up on the first floor since around 05:30 that morning ‘as a precaution’. She was only 28 weeks pregnant. We didn’t think our first child, Poppy, was going to arrive quite so soon. And when she did, we weren’t sure she’d make it. And yet, here we are today.

This month, Poppy is turning 5.

I remember moments of that fateful day very vividly, burned into my cerebral cortex for as long as I draw breath, for better or worse.

There I was, walking back and forth with nervous energy. I stared down at my phone nervously, eyeing the time as I dialled my friend Joe. Emma and I were supposed to finally complete on our brand new house, our first home in fact, in just half an hour’s time at a location around fifteen miles away from where I was currently stood – something that obviously wasn’t going to happen, there was absolutely no way I was leaving her alone here.
“Hello?”
“Yeah, Joe, it’s me. Are you on your way down to Exeter yet? I might need some help with the new house…”, I asked, my voice cracking slightly under the weight of my anxiety.
Joe replied, but I’ll never remember what he actually said because of what happened next.

Our midwife, Gina, was her name, came bursting out of the double doors from the labour suite, and first looked left, then right, and set eyes directly on me. Time seemed to slow. I somehow knew exactly what she was going to say before she said it…
“The baby’s coming!”
My heart rate shot up, and my breath quickened. This was it. The baby absolutely shouldn’t be coming this early, but this was happening. I set off at a run behind the midwife toward the side room, which held Emma, and now a bustling team of doctors and medical staff.

At 1:52pm that day our life would change forever.

The truth is, this perhaps somewhat fairytale introduction to the world for our beautiful daughter was not quite as magical and cliché as one might imagine, even despite her defying the odds and truly embolding the word “miracle” to me. Poppy being born 12 weeks prematurely wasn’t the only challenging part of our birth journey. About a year before Poppy’s arrival was when we decided to have a baby. I say, decided, more like hoped. Emma has struggled for many years with a variety of health conditions, so we never knew if it was truly possible or not, and we both settled on the mindset that if it happens, it happens. If not, then we’d deal with that, too. The doctor tempered our expectations, suggesting that Emma may never carry a child. The first twist and turn of the rollercoaster that was Poppy would hit us out of the blue one day when, not for the first or last time, our future firstborn would prove medical professionals wrong.

The weather had taken a turn on the particular afternoon in question. It was cloudy and miserable outside. I sat there on the sofa in the living room of the two-bedroom terraced house we were renting at the time and happily held the Playstation controller in front of me. I was playing the popular cowboy-based video game Red Dead Redemption 2. I say, playing. I was actually just enjoying the graphics and err… fishing. Yes, I was fishing in a video game. Sometimes, it’s nice to empty your head of all meaningful thought. I hit pause because Emma wanted to tell me something important. Fearing that I was about to get a talking to for not doing the dishes last night, or that there was some workplace politics she wanted to share with me, I confess that I may have rolled my eyes slightly – ever the gentleman unfortunately. Lesson learned. She sat down on the sofa next to me and, with very little hesitation, showed me a pregnancy test.

It had a little cross in the window.

I looked up at the pause screen on the TV and frowned to myself. My brain had slowed down almost like a computer trying to process too many programs at once. A single line on those things meant it was negative… So, a cross meant that it was different to that. Which meant that it must be positive. Emma has just done that test. Which must mean that… When my poor, feeble little mind caught up to reality, I turned to face Emma in shock. I then had to have a lie down.

Looking back, it made perfect sense. I thought Emma was putting on weight, but what man in their sane mind would ever say that to their wife? She also kept complaining of her ankles becoming puffy, and that dreaded and unexplained sickness. During a routine appointment a week or so prior, a doctor simply dismissed her concerns as, “you’re working too hard”. Yes, I know… What we didn’t know was just how far along she already was. A trip to obstetrics a few days later revealed she was about 22 weeks along! If you’ve just done some quick math, you’ll have realized that means our pregnancy “journey” lasted only a little over 6 weeks. Things were about to seriously speed up.

We had precious little time to absorb the torrent of information that came our way. Our first week included the special moment of informing our parents, the excitement of signing up with the midwife team for antenatal support and sitting down to figure out all elements of our future from finances to work to home life. Barely had the news settled on our minds when the baby decided to throw an early curveball.

I was out cluelessly searching for baby clothes and toys when my phone rang. It was Emma’s mum gently advising that I should go and pick Emma up. Emma had been at work, and something ‘weird’ had happened to her. Weird is not a good word to use when you’re deep into your second trimester. When I spoke to her, she sounded perfectly calm. This was because the tidal wave of panic hadn’t hit her yet. 

Her waters had broken.

At 23 weeks gestation, waters breaking was bad news. 24 weeks is the critical point, we were told, where baby survival rates drastically change. Before that? It’s not a viable birth, usually. We were scared, but we just had to focus on the here and now and take it hour by hour. I took Emma straight to the hospital and spent a tense six hours by her side as she was undergoing various examinations. The diagnosis was a condition called P-PROM, premature rupture of the membranes. Her waters, by and large, were intact but that there was some form of rupture causing a loss of fluid. Emma was bundled into an ambulance with my Mother who’d arrived as quick as she could, blue lights on, and sent down to a more specialist hospital over an hour and a half away from home in Plymouth.

We were told to expect a premature birth. 

From that moment on, the special care baby world became our world.

Somehow, someway, we spent a week in Plymouth Hospital without any incident. Every hour of every day was a bonus as time painfully and slowly ticked by. Constant tests and check-ups reassured me that the medical professionals were all over this, Emma and I just had to deal with our emotions and our response to the shifting sands we found ourselves on. Family stepped up to help. Plans changed. I slept on my sister’s vacated bed at my parent’s house to be closer to help. For some reason I went to work at 06:30 in the morning and at 4pm I would drive just over an hour to the hospital where I would stay with Emma until 11pm, eating Subway sandwiches and biscuits. And repeat, for a few days. It was a tough week. I didn’t know what else to do but cling to what little normality I had left.

With no signs of labour yet, Emma was eventually discharged home. We had just successfully passed the 24-week mark, which meant our local hospital could now take her in if the baby decided to put in an appearance, however nothing was guaranteed and there was still that ultimate risk hanging above our heads, miscarriage… Every day, every hour, every minute that the baby stayed inside helped keep her safe, both of them, in fact. Emma was on bed rest for the next couple of weeks, which is easier said than done for someone so proactive and driven as her.

A tense week passed before we were summoned to attend another scan. The baby was developing well but apparently had short leg bones they predicted. Amongst this whirlwind of new information and tension, the most important moment came for us as I clutched Emma’s hand and we both stared at the screen in the ultrasound room… It was going to be a girl. For the first time amongst all this chaos, we smiled and tightly embraced. We were going to be Mummy and Daddy to a little girl!

Fast forward back to the labour suites I described at the beginning. Barely 4 weeks after our emergency trip to Plymouth and Emma had been admitted to Exeter off the back of only our second routine check-up.

Gina, the midwife bursts through the double doors with a bedraggled and sleep deprived Father-To-Be, yours truly, in tow. I ran to Emma’s side and clasped her hands as tightly. I will never, ever forget the haunting look of fear on her face. I bumbled my way through the sentence, “everything is going to be okay” unconvincingly as more and more medical staff came bursting in.

What happened next is a really difficult memory for me to write about, and it is the source of PTSD and trauma for both Emma and I, even 5 years on. I’ve taken my time to share this moment correctly.

Poppy was born.

She came out barely making a sound but gently wiggling. This tiny, tiny thing that could fit in the palm of one hand was our beautiful little daughter. They placed her on Emma for exactly 30 seconds. I remember seeing the doctor timing it precisely. Once that initial warmth and skin-to-skin time was up, things became frenzied. They took our little girl away. There was a big neonatal machine in the room with a heat lamp above, breathing apparatus and all sorts of dark magic for saving the day. Poppy was thrust amongst the throng of medical professionals as they set to work on her. Emma and I shared a long, terrified look. Our eyes filled with tears and our jaws hanging open. There were no words. I then heard a very clear, very chilling phrase that would forever stay with me.

“SHE’S NOT BREATHING.”

Time seemed to slow. Poppy was placed into a bag covering her whole body, with her head poking out. I stared as a gap opened up between nurses. Poppy was being intubated. I held Emma’s hand, frozen to the spot, our skin both ice cold. Poppy was placed into an incubator. I felt sick. Emma felt sick. This can’t be happening, no, this isn’t real. Poppy was being wheeled out of the room at speed. I looked at Emma, torn between needing to stay with my wife, who was still quite concerningly bleeding out at that point and becoming a medical emergency of her own, and… “Just go.” She ordered. I set off at a jog, following Poppy left and right through the labyrinth of corridors until we entered the neonatal intensive care ward.

We had just watched our firstborn daughter die and be brought back to life before our very eyes. I don’t know who they were, the Doctors and nurses that day, but they were real-life superheroes.

And after all that… She survived. Poppy survived. In fact, Poppy thrived.

We spent 3 very long months in the NICU (neonatal ward) moving from intensive care to high dependence unit and eventually to low dependancy. We slept in the hospital. I split my time between unpacking the very basics into our new house and spending countless hours of the day and night staring into the incubator or holding Poppy when she was stable enough to let me. Sleepless nights. I would wake up at 4 or 5am and drive down. Emma never left the hospital and remained so unwell that for months, she was a patient herself, undergoing emergency surgery shortly after birth.

We spent Christmas Day there. The juxtaposition of a feeble attempt at Christmas decorations when a fragile life fights for survival in front of you is the reason I now struggle with Christmas every year. The little twinkling lights you put on your tree might bring a smile to some, but for me, they transport me straight back to that light blue padded chair sitting next to that incubator surrounded by machines keeping my daughter alive.

The day we came home was the best day of my life.

What followed in the weeks, months, and years are several other stories in their own right. Being totally isolated from the world during the pandemic. Learning about Poppy and her needs and disabilities as she grows. Learning about ourselves, because of Poppy. The first smile. The first crawl. The first time, she accepted food. Hundreds of cuddles and calm moments, many more hundreds of moments of chaos and anxiety when everything became a climbing frame, and it was funny to throw food on the floor. The day she finally came off oxygen, and we didn’t need to have massive tanks of the stuff delivered. Her first time communicating to us and her first time pointing at Grandma and Grandad.

The story I have just shared with you is entirely true. A rollercoaster of emotions to live through. A miracle child that is here thanks to the wonders of modern medicine and, I feel, someone smiling down on us that fateful day.

If there was a key message here, for me, it’s the reassurance that in times of strife, you are not alone. I have a lot of people to thank, and I honestly don’t know how I will ever repay the kindness shown to us throughout this. People who looked after Emma, people who looked after me. People who brought me food because I forget to eat for entire days at a time. Friends and family who rallied around and essentially moved houses for us, painted walls, and lifted washing machines for us. Moments like sitting on an empty living room floor with my Father-In-Law eating takeaway or explaining to my visiting closest friends what each of the little tubes and wires connected to Poppy was for. Even the little texts and messages just checking in on me each morning. Those people kept me alive in my darkest moments. I hope they are reading this now and realise that I’m here because of them. What can I do to repay them? Well, I make it my mission every day to try and pay that kindness forward onto someone else who needs it. If everyone did that, maybe the world would be a better place.

Right now, today, I have to tell Poppy to get down because she’s trying to climb into the living room window off the back of the sofa again. She is pointing at my biscuits, telling me she wants food. She knows what colours are, and she certainly knows what Pocoyo and Hey Duggee are! She has a tumble, so we put on her safety helmet, but she gets right back up undeterred and tries to pull herself up on the coffee table again.

I watch and smile as Poppy crawls into the kitchen and pulls herself up on the moses basket of our new baby and second child, Evelyn. She stares in fascination. Things are so much different now to that pre-pandemic, bleak winter of 2019. We’ve walked through hell as a family, and we kept going. Together.

Poppy is turning 5, and I am very, very excited to see what she does next.