Lisa Thomas
After 2 years of trying to conceive, my husband and I were thrilled that I was expecting our 1st child this was back in 1997. Being our first pregnancy, we were totally unaware of pre-eclampsia and the serious consequences of this. At 28 weeks gestation, the signs of pre-eclampsia were starting to show and I was admitted to hospital assigned to the excellent care of Professor Redman and the Silver Star Team. At 30+5, my baby was not moving and I had an emergency caesarean where our beautiful baby girl Eleanor Charlotte weighing 1.035 kg was born. Eleanor did have a collapsed lung and one point but had a relatively short stay of 6 weeks in Special Care and developed normally.
When expecting our second child, I was immediately referred to Professor Redman and had continuous scans and monitoring because he was unsure if I would get Pre-eclampsia and if I did, would it be as severe.
Unfortunately it reared its ugly head much earlier and I even had absent and reversed end-diastolic umbilical artery. James' chances of survival were not good. I had to have another emergency caesarean and our beautiful baby boy, James was born weighing a mere 600 grams and had obviously been severely affected by the pre-eclampsia. James was in Special Care for 5.5 months and was given a 50 percent chance of survival.
Despite many lows and coming home on oxygen for the first year of his life, he has thrived. James did re-do year 4 in school which was the right thing to do due to his size, friendship groups and ability to learn and keep up with others.
Five years later we had a consultation with Professor Redman to try for a third baby and he recommend a selection of vitamins and for me to have daily injections of heparin. Whatever the vitamins were they certainly helped because, in comparison, I had a relatively stress free pregnancy and although I was kept in hospital for about 3 weeks, I had a planned caesarean at 36 weeks and gave birth to another beautiful boy Oliver who weighed a hefty 2142 kg and didn't need to go into
Special Care. We finally felt complete with our 3 beautiful children and then just before celebrating my 40th birthday, we had surprise natural conception. We believed because it was natural, without taking clomid, things may be better but once again, the pre-eclampsia reared its ugly head very early on and at about 25 weeks we were told our little boy would probably not make it. Once again I was admitted to hospital at 28 weeks and had an emergency caesarean at 33+3 and our beautiful baby
Sebastian was born and weighed 1262 kg and spent 6 weeks in Special Care.
Needless to say our family is complete and we can never thank both Silver Star and Special Care enough for giving us the gift of our 4 beautiful children. We felt we wanted to share our story with you because when times are hard it's so uplifting to be able to read the stories of others and see the positive outcomes.
We have recently had the proud parent moments of seeing both Eleanor and James graduate.
Eleanor is Dr Eleanor Thomas and graduated with a Bachelor of Veterinary Science with Distinction and James has graduated with a Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours and has been working for the past year but is going to University in September to complete a Masters in Film Production.
Oliver and Sebastian are still studying and as yet not sure where their career paths will take them.
Thank you for reading our journey and we hope this helps others in a similar situation.
