31 Weeks

Diyoni is my first child and she was born as 31 weeks and 1 day. I had a mild pre-eclampsia and my local doctors in Warragul Hospital decided to send me to Monash Hospital in Clayton because Warragul didn't have the facilities to care for my baby until 34 weeks gestation.

This is the story of the birth of my amazing little boy Vincent and his adventures in the NICU. On the 27th of December 2011 at 29 weeks I felt the familiar dizzy headache I had associated with my high BP so I checked it and it was 170/120.

January 3rd 2012, I woke up at 5.00 in the morning with what I thought were cramps from my baby moving all day. The day went on and it just got worse so then figured I was just getting Braxton hicks.

You never expect that you will have trouble starting a family. It took us only 5 months to become pregnant, so we assumed that everything would be fine. Very sadly we lost that baby at almost 11 weeks. It was crushing.

After trying to conceive for some time, my husband and I were finally successful to get pregnant via IVF. We were ecstatic to discover that I was pregnant with twins. Our dreams were finally coming true.

Our beautiful daughter Mikayla was born on Wednesday 5th January 2011 at 4.04pm, weighing only 1765gms!

My husband Scott and I had been married for a few years when we decided that it was the right time to start a family. We were shocked and also over the moon to find out when we were 10 weeks pregnant that we were expecting twins.

My little miracle baby was born on the 14th of March 2008. I woke up thinking I had wet the bed but then realised my waters had broken.

I was admitted to the hospital because I had some respiratory issues. Aiden was due to be born on February 8th 2010, but there was another plan.

I thought our journey would start to get easier from there but I was wrong. Declan started having trouble breathing 20 hours after birth so he was transferred to NICU in another hospital 20 mins away.  For the next 7 days he and I were in different hospitals so all I had to enjoy were photos and videos of my little boy.

Home just in time for Christmas: Baby Charlotte was born at 31 weeks, weighing just 1.5kg. After 38 days in NICU, she finally has finally gone home with her family, just in time for Christmas.