Becoming a Mummy

Ruby Powell, born Sunday 11th of November 2012 at 1:50am weighting a big 8lb 12oz. She was full term 40+3 

I went to hospital a naive first time mummy in the throws of labour, no clue what to expect or what was ahead of us. 

I laboured and was considered a “low risk” pregnancy, everything seemed to be going ok with no concerns raised. I was labouring for a while so a doctor was called.  Ruby was delivered by vacuum delivery, and there seemed to be no reason for concern, from what we knew, everything seemed to be going to plan. 

That is where the nightmare started, a large red emergency button was hit on the wall and an alarm went off, our little girl was born blue and she wasn’t breathing, they whisked her away to the other side of the room where she was worked on by what seemed like 100 professionals. We had no clue what was happening, we hadn’t seen our baby, and no one was talking to us, we were beyond petrified, lying watching a big red digital clock on the wall counting every second as they worked on our daughter. 

All of a sudden I had an instant need to name our baby girl. I said to Andy “she needs her name, she needs her name”, I felt so strongly about this in my heart, so there and then we give her the name Ruby. A precious gem with such strength. 

We had been lying in that room watching them work to save her life, and after 20 minutes a young consultant approached us. I will never forgot their first words. The consultant said to us was “Hi I’m Dr ……., congratulations on the birth of your beautiful daughter, have you given her a name?” This meant so much to us, that the first focus was not how poorly our little girl was but the beautiful news that she was born and she was our precious girl.

The consultant then proceeded to tell us how incredibly sick our little girl was, we were in shock. Ruby had to be resuscitated at birth and intubated to keep her breathing, she was having seizures and spasms straight away, and was incredibly unwell. She was prepared for ambulance transfer, and with blue lights she was rushed to the nearest neonatal intensive care unit in Antrim Area Hospital. As I lay in a different hospital separated from my daughter, Andy followed behind that ambulance, we didn’t want our little lady to be on her own. 

It was like something out of a horror movie, we had no idea what was going on.  Do these things happen? How has it happened to us? Did we do something wrong? I got a call from Andy, he had arrived in the neonatal unit, he was in an absolute state and I couldn’t understand most of what he was saying, all I heard was “this is bad, this is bad, there are wires everywhere”. At that point a huge rush of anxiety came over me and I suffered a panic attack, I couldn’t find air to breathe and my chest was so tight. I felt my world heavy on my shoulders and chest, I did not know what was ahead of us or Ruby. Would my little girl survive? Will she be ok? Will I ever get to hold her?. I needed to get to the neonatal unit in Antrim, to Ruby, and that’s what I did, hours after giving birth and in no fit state. 

I arrived in neonatal, to the intensive care unit, and there in the middle of the room sat a plastic box. I peered in and there lay my little lady, she was intubated, wires and tubes everywhere, wrapped in a cooling therapy suit, I could barely see her face. A rush of fear came over me, and I burst into tears, and for the next 5 years I don’t think I stopped crying. 

From then we had many hard conversations about how sick Ruby was.  The first 48hrs of her life was 50/50, and if she did find the strength to hang onto her wee life she would face many challenges. We continued to sit propped up on high stools, day and night peering into that plastic box at our little lady fighting for her life, we were unable to touch her or hold her and it was the hardest thing I had ever faced. 

On Day 7 I finally got to hold my precious Ruby, it was the most amazing feeling in the world, even though it was under the watch of nurses, with wires, machines and alarms. It was a moment I will never, ever forget. At that moment, right there, I made a promise to Ruby and to myself that I would do absolutely anything for her. Whatever it took, my life was now all for her and I would fight every battle for, and with her, no matter what.