Liam, 30 weeks

I firstly want to start by saying I’m incredibly grateful to Kylie and Miracle Babies for allowing me the opportunity to share my son’s story.

Unfortunately, my story is one of love and loss.

Any chance I get to say my son’s name is like gold and I also take a lot of pride in my ability to represent not only NICU dads, but also bereaved parents and bereaved dads in particular.

Walking in and out of those NICU doors is one of the toughest walks a parent can take, but one of the hardest realities for me is accepting that we left that ward without our son.

Our son Liam Patrick Wood was born 30 + 3 weeks gestation at 7.33pm on the 11th of June, 2022 via emergency caesarean due to a cord prolapse, weighing 1.75kg and measuring 43cm.

My wife had a complex pregnancy with many scares, which was initially a twin pregnancy, and we miscarried the first twin somewhere between weeks 8 and 9.

Due to Liam being cord presenting, as well as other complexities during the pregnancy, we knew Liam was going to be preemie, it was just a matter of how premature and what condition his lungs were going to be in once he was born.

My wife spent the last six weeks of her pregnancy in hospital under observation as she was showing small signs of infection. I owned and operated a coffee shop at the time and reduced our trading hours to the bare minimum we could afford so I could be at the hospital with Beth at least twice a day.

During this six-week period, I would occasionally wander down to the NICU on level 5 and try and familiarise myself with what was ahead of us, but nothing can prepare you for that first moment of walking through those doors as a parent to a baby in there, especially under emergency circumstances like ours.

Maybe it was the terrified headspace I was in at the time, but I remember distinctly the sounds, the smells and just the general darkness of that level of the hospital, it’s something I’ll never forget.

Fast forward to the night Liam was born and I was sitting on the couch with my dog watching the rugby league game that was on at the time, and I got a call from Beth. I thought this was weird as we were just texting like 10 mins before and Beth was going to shower and get ready for bed.

I answered and it was a young midwife with a noticeably shaky voice. Her words were to the effect of “you’ve got to get here asap, Beth’s going in for an emergency caesarean as she’s just had a cord prolapse!”

Within seconds, our world as we knew it had been flipped upside down. I bolted out the door, left my dog on the couch and left the tv on, straight into my car.

I called my mother in-law as our plan was for Beths parents to come up from Northern NSW when we knew what was happening. I quickly hung up and called my sister as I flew through the tunnels towards RBWH. I was hysterical and on reflection, I’m so glad I didn’t have an accident or pick up a speeding fine for that matter.

The security guards at Royal Brisbane let me park out the front of the hospital for the night and I headed straight up to level 5. It took me 15 minutes to get on the ward from when I was called and missed any opportunity to see Beth before she’d gone in.

From memory, as Beth had just had dinner, I believe there was an issue with administering the anesthetic, which potentially delayed the Caesar.

It was brutal. It took 28 minutes from Beth hitting the panic button to Liam being born and Beth had lost just under 2 litres of blood during the caesar. It was rough and extremely physical as they couldn’t get Liam out.

I went from at 7.05pm to having both my wife and son healthy and fine, to the next I knew at 7.40pm, they were both critically injured and needing life saving treatment.

Liam was born lifeless and needed to be resussed four times in his first hour of life.

The next I heard anything was somewhere around 8.30ish as it took a long time to stitch Beth up and get her back to recovery, which was where I was waiting.

Its so odd though. As I was pacing around waiting for an update, I remember trying to regulate myself with the old “no news is good news” theory and remember checking the score in the football while I was waiting. Honestly, I couldn’t care less about the score, but it was almost like a safety type reaction.

As it took Beth quite a while to come out of the anaesthesia, I was doing all the talking with the doctors in regard to Liam’s health and treatment going forward.

We signed a waiver at 23 weeks saying administer as much care as possible and I remember a doctor taking me into a consulting room basically saying “look, it’ll be a good outcome if Liam can make it through the night and we need to know how much care you both want administered”

I was raging at this point. To be taken away from my near dead wife and son to ask me something we’ve already said previously just sent me through the roof.

The next twelve hours followed with plenty of ups and downs. I had no idea what was going on and needed to ask a Nicu nurse what all the beeps and numbers meant, who very kindly made it her mission that night/morning to be by my side and answer any questions I had in non-medical person terms. I’ll never forget the impact that lady had on my experience.

I’m a big body language watcher and because the medical staff were talking in their terminology, it was incredibly difficult to follow what was happening and then trying to relay information back to Beth and our immediate families.

So, my thing became observing staff movements and their interactions with each other, seeing how frustrated they were if things weren’t going to plan and paying close attention to how many people were around Liam’s humidicrib at the time. The more staff there were, the sicker he was generally.

Sunday morning rolled around and Liam was far from in the clear, but he was doing better than I think anyone expected and it was about 8.30am that I called my mum for the first time and I distinctly remember having just a little twinkle of hope in my voice that he might pull through.

It was around the late morning on Sunday that Beth and I were having a nap back at the birth suite and the staff had rolled Liam over to change and wash him. It was also around this time that they tried to up the meds he was on and this became the beginning of the end.

Liam was “stable” but not really responding as he should’ve been to the increase in meds and his lungs just weren’t working on their own to the extent that they should’ve been.

It’s a bittersweet pill to swallow now, but in the end, the only issue Liam ended up having was his underdeveloped lungs. All his other major organs were working fine. Unfortunately, you can’t survive without them.

I think from memory it was approximately 3pm that a doctor said to me, we’re running out of treatment options, and we may be getting to the point of discussing treatment going forward.

It doesn’t matter how desperate the situation seemed, I did not believe in my mind that he was going to die.

Your mind can be a strange place sometimes.
Subconsciously, trying to protect you until the absolute last minute where you can’t be protected anymore and you have to face reality.

It was mid evening that we decided to cease treatment and we were allowed to hold Liam for the first time. Beth held him first and we read books to him, told him how sorry we were that we couldn’t save him, took photos and did some memory making.

Beth’s mum and a nurse took photos on a couple of different cameras and at the time, it was the last thing on my mind but looking back now, I’m so grateful for their thinking as that’s all we have now and I look at a couple of different photos of Liam daily and have Beth and Liam having skin to skin as my wallpaper on my phone.

Once Beth was ready to let go, I cuddled Liam and he died in my arms about 40 minutes after we disconnected all of his cables.

Its weird but I felt so privileged to be there holding him when he took his last breath. He knew nothing but love throughout his life and as difficult as everyday is without him, I’m so proud of how hard he fought. Literally from the second he was conceived, he was up against and kept fighting.

The name Liam means in the Irish language “strong willed warrior” and that’s exactly what he is.

Liam Patrick Wood. Forever our little warrior!