Tuesday 30th November - Baby Zachary was born at 4am - 10 weeks premature.

Baby Zachary Anthony Templar O'Donnell. Born 3:55am on 30th November 2005. Weight 4lb 0.5 oz. 10 Weeks Premature.

These are baby Zachary's first photographs. I went into labour at 30 weeks and a few days. It was a bit of a shock going into labour this early and since I had been pumped full of drugs and then given sleeping pills during the actual labour I was quite groggy. The whole thing went really fast. Too fast for any pain relief apart from 'Gas and Air'. The gas & air was awful it doesn't actually help the pain and made me feel really sick. In fact it actually made me physically sick a few times which on top of everything was awful. I had awful pains in my side too which made them worry so we basically went for goal as soon as I was 9cm dilated.

2.5 hours after arriving at Worcester I delivered. I went from 3 to 5 to 9cm dilated in 20 minutes. It was so fast I hardly remember it now. They checked him over asap, let me hold him very briefly then took him off to intensive care to put him in an incubator. I had started to tear and bleed inside which is why my side hurt. I knew I was in pain and not just where I expected labour pain to hurt. I am lucky really that I had a great midwife who realised straight away that something was going wrong inside me.

So here he was that little blip on the photograph that looked like a peanut emerged a beautiful baby boy with a mass of dark hair. I saw him for only a moment before he was whisked away to an incubator so I was desperate to see him but was a real mess so I needed to clean up. It's strange really like all of a sudden realising that you look like an extra in a Kill Bill or horror movie and are torn between not giving a damn and wanting to feel a bit normal and clean. Anyway I bathing and dressed and we went straight to intensive care to see him.

Actually I was really tired (*** exhausted actually) and felt really quite shell shocked and overwhelmed by it all. I desperately wanted to hold my baby and it was so sad seeing him in the plastic incubator full of tubes and wires. I felt like crying but at the same time was so relieved that he and I were both ok. I guess I am still a bit beat up from all the drugs, the pain, the adrenaline etc. After a while the staff insisted I go back to postnatal to sleep. I wanted to stay with my arms wrapped around this plastic box and not move until he comes out but I realise that's completely irrational. The medical staff suggested its really important I get my rest as its such a shock and a very stressful experience giving birth anyway and on top of that being in Neonatal is a shock you don't expect. We all need to adjust. I promised him mummy would be back as soon as she can. Then I touched him through the little window so that he knew I was there and left. Too tired to cry even though I felt like it.

Premature Labour at 30 weeks - how it all started.

Ok so here I was 10 weeks away from giving birth. I am due at the start of february it is currently the end of November. I have the whole of December planned out. This is my time to enjoy the last trimester of my pregnancy which by the way I have loved every minute of. I aim to do some relaxing Christmas shopping trips, catch up with a few friends while I am still able to pick my handbag up and simply go and do lots of putting my feet up. I plan to have the whole family at my beck and call over Christmas. I plan to eat stacks of turkey and Christmas pudding. I also plan to sleep in very very late. Then maybe some leisurely january sales shopping to get my last minute baby planning done. I lastly plan to get around to reading the giving birth section in my official guide to being pregnant and having a baby.

So first of all I get up with a really stiff back. I have been plagued by lots of swelling. The medical term for this is edema. In fact I am hugely swollen. Puffy feet, ankles, hands, neck and obviously belly. After a day at work Mum and I are sat watching TV. Coronation Street is on and I am complaining of weird pains in my groin area. Strange thing is they seemed to come and go. So there I am trying to watch TV pacing the lounge because I can't sit still and settle. Mum tries to ply me with Chocolate Revels but I am too distracted. Now that is serious !!!! Turning down chocolate - something is not right girlfriend! I call my sister in law (just recently been through this) who informs me I should have read the last few chapters in the book by now (I am too scared to read them) and it is probably Branston Hicks. Sounds like a weird pickle so  I decide instead to get a hot water bottle. I end up in tears with Dad who is watching the football and tells me he will look for the Hot Bottle in a while. Mum runs a bath for me. I sit in the bath and Mum is telling me I will probably feel much better in the morning and sends me to bed early.

Ok so here I am lying in bed feeling these waves of weirdness pass over me and realise that the pain is not constant. In fact it comes and goes. I decided to time them. My watch reliably tells me that it is about every 12 minutes. It is 2:30 am and I am worried and can't sleep. In fact I am really scared. I wake Mum up, petrified something is wrong. We telephone the out of hours doctor who tells me to go to hospital and get checked up.

Dad groggily agrees to drive to Hereford Hospital mumbling the whole way that at least after a false alarm he will know how long it will take to get to hospital. We arrive they check me into this huge room and tie me up to all these machines. Dad finds a lazy boy in the corner, pulls his cap over his eyes, the chair leg up and goes to sleep. The rest as they say is history.

24 hours later Hereford hospital were calling me an ambulance to take me to another hospital. After realizing that my pre-existing heart problem (pericarditis) meant they could not risk leaving me on the drip drug they had been administering as it was making me very very ill they decided they could not stop me going into labour. For the baby and my safety I needed to be transferred to a hospital that could cope with a premature baby born earlier than 34 weeks. A lot of smaller hospital simply do not have the proper neonatal care for very early babies. there was some mad phone calling while they tried to find an incubator space as nearby as possible. At one point it looked as if Birmingham was most likely but then at the last minute a space came up at Worcester which is the next nearest city to Mum & Dad. Great news. Mum & Dad had been called and informed of the emergency and were on their way to Hereford when the hospital called my dad's mobile and told him to turn around and head to Worcester.

As they wheeled me out and I started to regain consciousness coming off the drip drug I do remember asking the ambulance man who had been evicted from 'I am a celebrity get me out of here'. Strange the things that filter through your brain eh! I also vaguely remember the ambulance journey and know for sure that it was a really fast ride and incredibly uncomfortable. They tried to give me a gas and air 50/50 mix and I know I gave them a lot of abuse in the ambulance about how bumpy it was. At one point I remember telling them I had definitely had enough and they turn around and take me back. 'We are nearly there' the accompanying midwife informed me. 'Don't bloody lie to me!' was my answer.

Having a Premature Baby in Intensive Care

Having a premature baby is really a big shock. I have been reading my Bliss book on special care & premature births. They describe one of the emotions you feel a little bit like mourning. Mourning for the end of your pregnancy you don't get. The loss of that last few months when you had things planned. There is also the post birth emotional & physical crash anyway. Then there is the fact you had nothing prepared. Plus you have to watch your baby being looked after by all the medical staff while you stare at them through the plastic and occasionally get to hold them for a few minutes. I read the book and all the stuff a few times before I realised that I wasn't actually taking anything in. I know all the official blurb is meant to help, I know he is well looked after I just feel so tired and emotional. I feel so jealous of the Mum's taking their babies home and keep wondering if something i did when I was pregnant caused this. Of course that's daft because it isn't true but you do wonder if you could have done something to avoid this and just hope that he doesn't realise that his start to life has been a little traumatic. Like mother like son. I had a traumatic start to life too and I guess babies are just so much resilient than you think. lets face it he is warm, sleepy and well fed and totally oblivous to my emotional rollercoaster.

The staff are great. They know you are going through all these emotions that you can't seem to explain or describe to anyone even your best mates and your family. They are gentle, caring, sympathetic and so lovely with the babies. At least I know we are both getting the best care we could hope for. The photo is my very first cuddle. Was allowed to take him out for a few moments to say hello for the first time and touch him. I would have cried if I hadn't been so exhausted. I am so envious of the Mum's that come from delivery into postnatal with their bouncy pink babies wrapped up in their arms that I want to scream. I ask them - plead with the staff to move me to a room where I can't hear the babies as it is driving me nuts.

Giving Birth & Surreal Moments.

I had not had time to prepare for this moment so to be honest it was all a case of whatever happens just happens. I did not know what the early labour pains were and certainly was not prepared for true labour when it came. The worst part of my experience was probably the ambulance ride from Hereford to Worcester Hospital. I was in pain from the problem happening with my placenta and the bumping about was awful. I wasn't a happy traveller and let the poor ambulance crew know it ! Poor chaps. The rest was a blur although thankfully quite a short one. I do remember at 3am the midwife saying she hoped I had delivered by the time she came of shift at 8am. Quick as a blink I answered "I **** hope so that's 5 hours away !" Everyone laughed and said it was obvious the gas and air hadn't dulled my ability to make mental calculations. I will admit that it was a really painful experience. But its true what they say about how quickly you forget it all. How strange that at one point you can be in so much pain then its like having a tooth pulled. Once the baby is out its all over and the pain quite simply disappears. My brother is right the delivery room ends up looking like a scene from Reservoir Dogs - blood everywhere. The most surreal moment was getting bathed and cleaned up afterwards then walking from the bathroom and all this blood escaping. It cascaded onto the floor and as I looked up I saw the colour drain out of my Dad's face. I remember thinking that I couldn't imagine all these people seeing me naked never mind my Mum & Dad. The point is when you are giving birth no matter what you think before hand once it happens you really don't care about things like people looking at you. Unless of course they can make it less painful then they are welcome to look as much as they like. All worth it in the end though and now I know why women go through this often again and again.

1st December 2005 - Day 1 in Neotal with Baby Zachary - Special Care Baby Unit (SCBU)

Yesterday was such a shock but it still hadn't really sunk in that I had actually had the baby and was in hospital. I woke up a bit disorientated this morning. I went straight down to neonatal to see baby Zachary. He is fine and is breathing fine just on his own which is so great. He has high billirubin levels so needs some light therapy for his jaundice and today he is very tired so I have been told to leave him alone and let him sleep. Its so strange sitting there next to the incubator.In your wildest dreams when you think about when your baby will be born you do not imagine your baby having to be in an incubator. You do not imagine yourself in this scenario at all. Its hard. I stood in the shower and simply started to cry. I couldn't stop. For 2 hours I just kept trying to pull myself together and then crying again. The staff are great and brought me tea and food and brought me lots of things to read about babies who are in Neonatal Care. Our second cuddling session. He is so beautiful. I feel pretty emotional and in the need for a bit of space from the world while I get my head around what has happened. I've had a baby !

Kangaroo care

Kangaroo care is something that the neonatal unit at Worcs are very keen to get the Mum's involved in. It entails stripping the baby down to a nappy and you down a bit too so that you can get as much skin to skin contact as possible. Basically you slip the baby inside your top so that they feel your skin close to them. It has a calming effect on the baby. I can see where the name comes from its so much like a baby roo inside a pouch.

Zachary's First Visitors at Hospital

The first people to visit Zachary after he was born were the people who went to see him in his incubator that very first day. I guess that included me although I feel odd about that. Do the visitors come to see Mum and baby or is it the baby that counts really. Certainly that picture of Mum holding baby in arms while the family all flock in will not feature in our album but hey we did all go and stand and hold his hand and sit and watch him fight for those first few hours. Fight for life. It is amazing how something so small can be so strong willed. It is amazing what life can acomplish. This tiny little baby attached to all those tubes has all the medical care that he can have but at the end of the day it all comes down to that tiny babies fight for his or her own life. Zachary breathed off the ventilator quite quickly so when you think about it while we were stood around and he had his very first visitors he was already fighting his own battle and doing remarkably well. So his first visitors were Me, my Mum and Dad (taking the photographs), my brother James and my sister-in-law Liz. Yes if you look closely at one or two of the photographs it is obvious I am really happy but also very emotional. The machines, the incubator etc were not what I had expected I guess you get used to them later on down the line.

2nd December 2005 - Shock of Baby in Intensive Care has still not sunk in and expressing milk into a machine like a cow is very weird.

Today I feel a bit better. Less in shock although still exhausted. I am a little bit in pain too so that doesn't help. I have been discussing whether I want to breast feed Zachary. Clearly he physically cant as he is being fed with a tube but he can be fed my milk as long as I use a machine to pump it into a bottle which they can give him. Its called expressing. So I have been learning to express! Its like being a dairy cow. They talk about all the hormones released when your baby is near and crying to be fed that help you produce milk. Well the machine doesn't do that so its pretty weird. I guess the thing is I can't do a lot to help him right now. The medical staff are taking care of him and that's best I know that. So if I can't do much then I can at least have a go at being 'daisy the cow'. Of course the staff in neonatal encourage you to visit a lot and take part in some of looking after your baby. I think its for mum's benefit really as much as anything. I think they do it to stop you feeling really helpless and isolated. Having a baby in an incubator is not the picture you dream of and Its weird. Somehow naturally you feel as if you should be caring for your baby. Cuddling , feeding, changing and generally caring for your baby and its hard knowing that at the moment you can't do that. It si hard knowing that even if you wanted to you can't simply take your own baby home. They will not let you. Your baby is under the care of the medical community and that makes you almost feel as if your own baby is not completely yours just yet and own't eb until they come home. Wow that is tough. Of course I know he will be fine and once he grows a bit and his organs all work themselves out he will put on weight and get stronger and we can both go home. Then he will feel like really my baby. Its simply a matter of ticking off the days. It is hard to describe. You have moments when you can't help but feel overwhelmed and emotionally drained by it all. I know I am struggling a bit with the emotional side which feels totally irrational but uncontrollable.

Play a movie clip of Zachary in his incubator (3Mb) by clicking this small graphic. He is simply so tiny. My dad said it is like half a baby isn't it. Actually at 4lb he is a good weight or so I am told and that counts in his favour. Lots of babies in Neonatal are around 2lb and really do look tiny. A miracle really of modern science that they all survive and do so well. They will all catch up too. You watch him grow into a 6ft handsome man! It is so scary to watch those tiny babies inside the incubator that you simply have to hold onto the thought that one day they will all grow up.

Why his name is Zachary

Way back before I had my 20 week scan I had a dream. This dream was so vivid and real that for a split second when I woke I almost felt it was real. I knew straight away when I woke up that my little bump was telling me who he was going to be. I knew without any doubt that my baby would be a boy and that his name was Zachary. I am sure there is a rational explanation. I am sure I read the name somewhere. I am sure all Mum's to be have dreams about what their baby will be like. I am sure I already felt that he was a boy and that is why the dream was about a boy.

Never the less I woke and without a shadow of a doubt knew that my baby boy would be named Zachary. He would be blonde and a proper little fesity character with a very determined straight forward character. What was the dream about?

I had been called into school to see the head teacher when zachary was about 5. He had punched another boy older than him on the nose. This boy had called him names and made fun of his name. I was sitting opposite this teacher explaining that I had taught Zachary to never bully but at the same time to not put up with being bullied. To stand up for himself. So while I understood that hitting was not good I knew that there would be a reason and it would not be unprovoked. Lets face it that boy would think twice about bullying him again. It was such a vivid dream. i could not see his face but I remember ruffling a head of blonde hair.

I did not tell anyone about my dream until the day he was born. then I told everyone that his name was Zachary and that I had always known what his name would be since the dream. I love the name and don't even mind it being shortened although I think I will always call him Zachary.