Hayden

Hayden James… Part 1

Hayden (or he Pickle as he is known) was born at 38 weeks via planned c-section on 1st of July 2013 weighing 4lb 8oz. I know every mum never forgets the births of their child but I remember Hayden’s not in the way most mums do. It was filled with panic and worry and dread. It was not the happy elated experience I had with my first and that will forever break my heart.

Hayden was a very big surprise as I found out just 9 months after my daughter Paige was born that I was expecting again. I can tell you my boss was not happy as I had only been back to work for 2 weeks after my maternity leave haha. Being pregnant for me is not a nice happy experience as I have a clotting disorder that requires injections in my stomach the whole way through plus aspirin. Due to this I am closely monitored and have my own consultant and I was very well looked after. So I had scans at 6, 12 and 16 weeks and everything was going great. I was feeling fine and didn’t even have any morning sickness like with Paige. Then it was the 20 week scan. And the words you don’t want to hear “there is a problem with one of the measurements and the consultant needs to speak to you”. I felt like my heart stopped. But once we had seen the doctor and they said it’s not a huge concern and it might catch up and to come back in 2 weeks.

So the longest 2 weeks ever later and laying on the bed feeling sick I heard those words again. I was sent for a more in-depth scan with a specialist within the hour as they were very concerned. They picked up that the baby was not growing as it should be but without an amnio there was no way to tell what the problem was. I refused the amnio as I had no intention of putting baby at risk so they offered me at 22 weeks a termination. It was a hell no! We had already lost 4 babies due to my blood disorder and had no intention of an amnio or termination. For us we decided that knowing if the baby had downs (which is what they initially thought) or not would not make a difference as to whether to terminate or not.

And so the fun began. I was signed off work at 22 weeks and told to rest, with a 1 year old that was not happening! I had 3 scans a week and was stapled to the monitor for another 3 days so I might as well just have lived at the hospital. At one of these scans they found that most of my amniotic fluid had disappeared. It was a total mystery and they said that they might have to deliver him any time. Not what you want to hear at 24 week! So we met the neo-natal team and had steroids. But the boy was hanging in there. He was growing, very slowly but he was fighting. He was staying put and they decided that he was too small to cope with a natural delivery and he was also breech due to lack of fluids so at 38 weeks Hayden was delivered by section. I got a 3 second glimpse of my baby boy and he was whipped away from me. No one was telling me what was happening and I have never been so scared in my entire life. They took him into another room for what seemed like forever. They eventually let me seem my boy and I just cried. To me he was perfect but the doctors kept discovering more problems. Hayden’s face was quite disfigured. And his head was a funny shape and there was talk of helmets and a million other things that I didn’t take in at the time as it had been less than an hour that he’d been brought into the world. They discovered he also had a cleft palate. Yet another blow as this destroyed all my feeding plans.

But once in the ward he started to feed with a bottle which was amazing. Slow but he was trying. For the first 5 days Hayden was with me on the maternity ward and despite everything seemed to be doing well. On day 5 they noticed he had very mottled skin on his legs and they thought it could be a heart condition. They rushed him down for a scan and thought they had found a narrowing so he was rushed to Manchester royal children’s hospital. Very luckily he was fine but it was very distressing and when he was sent back to our local hospital I wasn’t able to stay with him so he had to go into the nursery on NICU. And this is where it all went wrong….