World Prematurity Day 2021
I was at a house warming party when I was 34 weeks pregnant with my first child. I had just one week left at work, and I was really looking forward to a few weeks of lazy days, perhaps swimming a bit, learning more about birth and breastfeeding, getting my hair and eyebrows done, preparing the cot and some clothes…
Then my waters broke. My partner had had a few beers so I drove us to the hospital. And I didn’t leave for three weeks because our baby was born the next morning at 34+4 weeks. To say it was a shock was an understatement – all of my plans had been thrown into disarray and I had a tiny baby down in the nursery, it was not the dream of sitting in a hospital room cuddling a chubby little baby that I had had in mind!
When my twins were born at 33 weeks, I was expecting it, but it made it no less traumatic to have two tiny babies that I had to leave in hospital and go back to an AirBnB every night because there was no where for parents to stay. We had to spend five weeks in Perth altogether, and we were really lucky to have family help and support from my partners work, but many country families are not as fortunate.
So, World Prematurity Day is an awareness day close to my heart. It is a day to promote awareness of the 1 in 12 pregnancies that end in premature birth, leading to a burden on families not only immediately, but sometimes long term if a child goes on to have additional needs, or sometimes, tragically, the death of the baby.
In Western Australia, there has been a lot of work in recent years to decrease the numbers of preterm births, which I find really exciting. More information about this important work can be found here: Home | The Australian Preterm Birth Prevention Alliance (pretermalliance.com.au).
A real focus of my work though, is supporting those families that have experienced premature birth and face additional challenges in establishing breastfeeding, and need some extra support with the transition to home after sometimes months in hospital. Some parents can come away from that experience feeling quite disempowered. It is common for me to hear that they felt like they had little control over what was happening to their babies, and sometimes even that it felt like the baby belonged to the hospital. Coming from this environment where everything is done by the clock and your baby has been monitored 24/7 by medical staff, it can be really scary to now be in sole charge of this tiny baby!
To those families, I see you, and have some experience with the challenges you now face. Please feel like you can reach out for support. If it isn’t something I can help you with, I can point you in the direction of someone that can. I want to see your beautiful little family growing strong, despite your rocky start.