Why the Special Care Baby Unit is so important to our hearts and why we want to repay them

Placenta Previa is a complication of pregnancy in which the placenta grows in the lowest part of the womb and covers all or part of the opening to the cervix. The biggest risk is severe bleeding that can be life threatening to the mother and baby.

It’s November 30^th 2003 and having already suffered a couple of major bleeds mid afternoon my partner suffers another massive bleed only this time she’s been receiving steroid injections in an attempt to strengthen the babies lungs in case the baby is born prematurely. The expected date of birth was a little two months away still. So that afternoon we found ourselves in the back of an ambulance en route to the West Suffolk Hospital in Bury St Edmunds. It’s worth noting at this juncture that despite the bleed there were certainly no signs whatsoever of my partner having gone into labour.

When you suffer a bleed and go into hospital they monitor the heart rate of the baby and run through a series of checks so here we found ourselves once more with mother and baby being monitored only this time something was different; the babies heart rate was considerably different to what it had been the previous trips. Now despite school letters arriving addressed to myself from the school as Doctor Ryder it’s safe to say I’ve never had any medical training other than being a trained first hander as my role as a Child Minder. So for me to suggest at this stage to the Doctor that my partner was in labour would seem a tad strange but I had done some reading up on the subject so it wasn’t just guess work. The doctor dismissed it out of hand though. I have no idea how long had passed by the time a mid wife came onto the ward to do some checks but it seemed like a good couple of hours had passed. I raised my concerns and stated again why I thought what we had on our hands was a painless labour. Let’s just say that I might have had a decent run in medicine had I ever started to become qualified. I don’t know the exact number of people in the operating theatre that afternoon but I believe it was over 20. I wasn’t allowed in instead I was about to take the old fashioned root into fatherhood and I went off to wait on the ward. Time seemed to stop as I anxiously waited for news. I tried to keep occupied by watching the TV, just trying to do anything to keep my mind from wandering and over worrying.

Finally a nurse came and found me and led me down a series of corridors. I was off to see my child. She said something along the lines of “he’s on the Special Care Baby Unit,” to which I replied that had ruined the surprise. I can’t remember what she said back but my mind wasn’t really concentrating. I was thinking I’ve got a son and wondering if my partner was alright. The nurse promised to try find out if she was OK and told me she’d let me know as soon as she knew which is fair enough.

I was lead onto the ward of the Special Care Baby Unit. If you’ve never been on one of these wards it’s a bit like walking into a library where the silence is only interrupted by the beeps of life support machines. In front of me was an array of life support machines helping keep premature babies alive, one of which included my own baby. Now normally at this juncture I’d have probably have cracked under the pressure but from the depths of I don’t know where I stood up to the game and this was the first time I guess I’d ever really felt like a grown up. Probably quite worrying given the fact I was 25 and probably hadn’t thought through the real ramifications of what becoming a father for the first time was going to be like for me. I certainly hadn’t been expecting the first sight of my child to have been in an incubator fighting for its life.

Inside one of the incubators on the left side of the ward was my child. The way the ward works is as the children get better they move around the room until they are hopefully well enough to leave. It’s quite normal for children who are born premature to have to spend the rest of the time they would have been in the womb in the unit before they might get to go home. I was told to prepare for two things firstly my baby was fighting for their life and might not see out the end of the day. Secondly if they did chances were that we were looking at a seven and a half week stay before the baby could go home. Trying to take all this in wasn’t easy. Now I’ve always been a natural born worrier. I think it might be genetic as my own father is very much the same. I guess I should have been really worried at this point but I think I was numb to what was really going on and the seriousness of the situation facing me. Finally with everything explained to me it was time to meet my first born child. I was lead to an incubator which was helping keep my baby alive. Oxygen was being pumped into the babies lungs which were seriously underdeveloped. I was told that none of the babies vital organs were working and the baby was being kept alive by means artificial and there were no signs that the body was responding or beginning to work under its own steam. If the baby didn’t respond in the next few hours it didn’t look good. It dawned on me that I really should be preparing for the worst.

Having washed my hands thoroughly with alcohol gel I was allowed to open the door of the incubator and I sat and ran my finger over the smallest arms and legs, hands and feet that I’d ever seen. Even the smallest sock on the ward was far too big drowned the baby’s foot.

This was my introduction to fatherhood. This is how Amelia Jane Austin-Ryder came into the world. I hadn’t had a boy obviously I was a first time father to a little girl who was possibly hours away from death and I still had no news about the condition of my partner. I don’t believe in God at all but just in case I was saying my prayers all the same as a safety bet. Well you would wouldn’t you at a time like that? It’s only natural I guess and it wasn’t hurting anyone. I can vaguely remember the next couple of hours but I couldn’t tell you the sequence in which they happened. I phoned my parents to tell them that they now had a granddaughter and not for the first time that day, I masked the true seriousness of the situation, thinking it unfair that everyone was going to be spending the next few hours worrying and going through hell. I phoned Amelia’s older sisters who were thrilled to have a little sister and I did the same with my best friend whose partner had given birth five weeks earlier to my God son. I sent several texts out announcing her arrival and went back onto the ward trying to find out any information I could on my partner. Finally they wheeled her onto the ward where I was sat with Amelia but she couldn’t even bring herself to look at the incubator convinced the baby was going to die and feeling that she had failed her and me. I went with her to the ward trying to convince her that she hadn’t failed any of us but high on drugs and emotion none of it was doing any good. The next few hours were spent running between two wards trying to convince her that everything was fine and that Amelia was doing well and wasn’t about to die when there was a very real chance she wouldn’t last the night. I was asked several times if I was lying. Of course I wasn’t I said despite the fact that I was clearly lying through my teeth and wanted my partner to come down onto the ward and spend what might have been the only hours of her life. I didn’t want to leave either of them but unable to convince her to come down onto the ward I thought it best to be by Amelia’s side. Physically and mentally exhausted I was basically told by the staff to go home and assured that sleep would be the best thing I could do right now and that I also needed to look after myself. I tried to argue for a while but in vein. In the small hours of Monday morning I made my way back to my parents home and managed to grab a couple of hours sleep before going straight back to the hospital.

Upon returning to the ward I was told that my daughter had managed to have a wee. As I said I’m not medically trained and I had to ask the significance of what seemed quite a trivial act by the nurse who looked like she’d just won the national lottery. I will never forget the smile and genuine excitement on her face. She explained to me in simple terms it meant that Amelia’s vital organs had started to kick in. It might have been one of the smallest of toilet actions ever recorded – something like 0.2ml but that didn’t matter. She now had a chance. She had also been trying to pull the oxygen pipes off her face – she’s a fighter I was told. I felt relieved not only that Amelia was starting to respond to treatment but more importantly my lies had been covered up. I arranged for the girls to come up and visit their new baby sister and their mother. Seeing both of them upset brought out my first tears I’d cried since my daughter had been born. I’d stayed strong throughout but now I was starting to crumble inside, overcome with emotion. I have tears rolling down my eyes as I speak thinking about it now.

Over the next couple of days Amelia started to meet people from our lives; her sisters, my parents, my partner’s mother and her brother, my best friend, her best friend. Most importantly I had managed to get Amelia’s mother down onto the ward for the first time. Whilst things weren’t great for Amelia and we were looking at a seven and a half week stay ahead of us including Christmas in hospital, they could have been far worse in hindsight.

The next few days were somewhat of a blur but finally Amelia had progressed well enough to be able to come out of her incubator for the first time. I’m welling up again just thinking about the kindness from my partner when it was decided that I should be allowed the first hold of my daughter something I will always be grateful for. She was so tiny and delicate. The width of her hand couldn’t have been much more than a centimetre at best. I was petrified I was going to break her like a china doll in my hands she was so delicate. She won’t thank me for saying so but she looked like a little monkey looking back she was so hairy but at the time she looked the most beautiful baby on earth. I was so proud and felt really quite overcome once more by everything.

As the days went by we were allowed to get more hands on in Amelia’s care and undertook feeds and changed her nappies like any other parent would do, the only difference being that most babies weren’t wired up to machines helping keep them alive. To feed a premature baby you have to put the milk down a tube which goes down into the baby’s stomach. The tube can be inserted through the nose or the mouth neither of which Amelia liked and she was constantly trying to pull it out. I think she actually managed to dislodge it quite considerably when it had been through her nose so the staff had changed tact and put it through her mouth instead. I’m glad that I didn’t see the tube going in or out.

Changing a nappy with monitors attached to a baby’s foot isn’t the easiest of things. The first time I did it I managed to knock the wire off which nearly resulted in me having a heart attack. After the umpteenth time I’d done it I would put my hand in the air to acknowledge my mistake and calmly put it back onto her foot.

During the time of Amelia’s stay in the Special Care baby Unit I was still having to go to work during the day. I would visit the ward first thing in the morning and do the feeds and get her dressed and changed and my partner would take over during the day. For most of the time we were passing ships in the night as I was staying at my parent’s house closer to the hospital. Neither of us was able to really support the other at that time and it was quite a tricky time trying to juggle Amelia, work, the girls and every other part of everyday lives that goes on in between.

The staff on the ward were, hand on heart absolutely amazing throughout Amelia’s stay. The levels of care would surpass your wildest imagination and expectation not just for Amelia but for the parent’s as well. Words simply cannot express the genuine gratitude I will have for every member of staff who cared and looked after my daughter during her stay. The fact she was home just nineteen days later remains testament to the amazing job they did. At Christmas time we took every single member of staff a handmade box of Belgian chocolates as a thank you for all they’d done for Amelia. Amelia’s eldest sister went on to raise over a thousand pounds at her school which she donated to the ward.

The cost of Amelia’s stay was we were told was in six figures. Had I the money I would gladly have repaid it back to them twenty times over. Raising money for them once more is a way of once more being able to say thank you to them. The work that a Special Care Baby Unit does and the teams that staff them can never be underestimated not only in the importance of what they do but what it means to the parent of any baby that comes into the world via their special and fantastic care. It’s immeasurable it really is and we can as parents never fully come back to repaying all our gratitude. We can only help that by fund raising that we can help other babies and parents in the future and to do that we need your help. The level of support has been amazing so far but keeping the word going will help us achieve our goals and enable us to move onto more projects in the future and continue to help other people in the name of our amazing daughter Amelia Jane.

Thank you to everyone’s amazing support so far but an even bigger thank you to everyone at the Special Care baby Unit at the West Suffolk Hospital. It’s an honour to raise money and to be able to start to repay once more the amazing work you did for our daughter and our family.

If you aren’t familiar with the Athlete song ‘Wires’ look it up on YouTube. The lyrics to the song fit perfectly to what I felt at the time of Amelia’s birth and more than eight years later the song has me in pieces thinking about Amelia coming into the world and the miracle that she not only survived but more importantly thrived to potentially one day become a Paralympian.