the day everything changed

Five years ago I was laying in a hospital bed, happily working away on my laptop.

I was 33 weeks pregnant.

Life was good. I felt great. Full of energy, excited about my work, chatting with colleagues telling them I’d be back next week. When the doctor came in I genuinely thought they were coming to tell me I could go home, that everything was ok.

But instead, the doctor explained I needed to deliver the baby early.

At first my brain assumed ‘early’ meant like a few weeks earlier than my due date.

But no. When I asked how soon, the doctors response was “Today.”

Shocked is an understatement.

This piece covers a difficult pregnancy and premature birth — just a heads up if that's something you're not in a place to read today.

The doctor explained that I had developed a rare, life-threatening condition called HELLP syndrome (don’t even get me started on whoever came up with that name...but if you’re wondering it stands for Hemolysis, Elevated Liver enzymes and Low Platelets and happens in less than 1% of pregnancies).

My bloods were getting worse each day. My blood pressure was high, I had preeclampsia, my kidneys and liver was struggling, and an ultrascan showed my baby was down from the 50% percentile to 2% - the placenta was no longer feeding him.

Up until this point I only had two symptoms that hinted something was wrong.

The first was what I now realise was severe fluid retention. For the two weeks before, my ankles disappeared and merged with my calves turning my legs into swollen sausages, which I thought was ‘normal’ for this stage of pregnancy. My weight had gone up 5kg in 2 weeks - thanks to all that fluid retention, again, assumed that was normal. And my baby had gone from kicking me non-stop like an Muay Thai fighter all day to barely feeling much movement. Again, I thought maybe that is normal now that hes getting bigger and has less room to move. But something told me I should get it checked out, which is how I ended up (thankfully) in hospital a few days earlier.

9 hours later, my son was born by emergency c-section, breathing on his own thanks to the quick actions of the doctors and nurses who had given me steroids the night before to help his lungs develop, just incase it came to this. He spent a month in the special care nursery, before we could finally take him home.

I haven’t spoken much about this experience. But today, reflecting that it’s his fifth birthday has brought it all back to the surface.

I’m remembering what a tough time that was. How scared I felt. How uncertain about what would happen next.

Up until that moment, most of my life had gone pretty much to plan. This was the first time I realised that I was not in control of what would happen. I could only control how I responded to it.

Doctors and nurses would come in to check on me and ask how I was doing, and despite the fact that I’d barely slept in a week, I was so full of energy and positivity, so much so that they’d often be double checking the chart and being like wait is this the same person who is on deaths door right now.

It felt like the best chance for both of us, was if I remained optimistic and hopeful that everything would be ok. I didn’t want to give fear space in my mind to grow, because I worried that if it did there’d be no stopping it.

And so I focussed on what I could control. On staying positive and hopeful.

I’m always been a very independent person. I grew up with the mindset that no one is coming to save you. You have to help yourself. This was the first time that I realised that’s not always true.

When the doctors told me I needed to give birth that day, I didn’t believe them.

I didn’t want to believe them. I wasn’t ready for this. I thought I had much more time. My thinking jumped to everything I’d read about the importance of a natural birth. For the first few hours I let my stubborn self take the wheel, I wanted to at least try to have a natural birth before the surgery, because that is what I’d read was important for the health of my child. It seemed, in my head, like the best chance for my baby to have a good life, that if I didn’t do it that way he’d have immunity problems or complications.

But my body had other ideas. It quickly became apparent the doctors were right. My body was shutting down. I couldn’t stop vomiting, I could feel my body losing the fight. I gave the go ahead for the emergency c-section.

As they were wheeling me into surgery my entire body was going into shock. I couldn’t stop shaking. I was terrified that I wouldn’t be able to hold still for the epidural. But somehow when the time came, my body was steady and I was able to hold myself up. I just kept repeating in my head, you’re stronger than you think. You can do hard things.

And even though I was in a situation that felt absolutely terrifying. I somehow no longer felt scared. Looking around me there were twenty doctors and nurses. Half prioritised on my health, and the half on the health of my baby.

It was such a surreal experience. My body entered a state of calm, almost meditative as I laid there and they cut me open.

My son was born, nearly 7 weeks early, weighing less than 1.8kg. He was absolutely tiny. He had no body fat to the point that my husband and I joked that he looked like a little ironman athlete. Which was far nicer to say out loud than he looked like an alien. His head had fully grown, because that happens earlier on in the pregnancy, but towards the end of the pregnancy the placenta was failing and he had stopped growing.

Now, 5 years on, you’d have no idea.

5 weeks old vs 5 years old. Still pulling nearly the same pose.

He’s smart as a tack, absolutely obsessed with numbers. His idea of relaxing at bedtime is to do math. He’s particularly excited about multiplications and working backwards or adding up big numbers at the moment.

And I’m sure everyone says this about their kid, but he just has the most beautiful soul. For his 3rd birthday he wanted to spend the day picking up rubbish at a park and made a game out of it with his friends. I’m so proud of who he is and can’t wait to see what he does next.

When I was younger, I thought when I have kids life will change. I’ll take a few years off my career and focus on spending time with them.

And life has changed. But not in the way I expected. A few months after the birth, even though I’d planned to take a year off, I wanted to go back. I deeply missed it.

Interestingly the same thing happened with my sabbatical. (more on that to come soon…)

I’m learning that my soul needs multiple things to spend my time and energy on. I don’t want to be all in on just one thing. He is such an important part of my life and I love him more than anything. But I need things for myself as well.

This experience, and the last 5 years of parenthood, has taught me that life is often out of our control. That things don’t always go to plan. But that it’s actually ok when they don’t. Because sometimes, things end up being even much better than you imagined. ❤️