“When I was 32 weeks pregnant, on the morning of the 13th March 2019, as I was emptying the dishwasher in my pjs, my waters broke. My husband, Neil, had fortunately not left for work. We had just moved to Putney but had been living in Hackney for most of the pregnancy so were registered with a hospital near there. When we got in the car to drive there, we called them and let them know we were coming. But – they refused to take us. They were aware how early the baby was coming and said they didn’t have enough beds for her in the Neonatal Intensive care. So, we called the nearest hospital, which luckily, was Chelsea and Westminster. I remember sobbing on the phone to the poor woman at the other end (at C&W) saying I couldn’t get hold of someone to transfer my papers over – and she just said, “don’t worry about any of that, just come inside, we’ll look after you”.
Once there it was a pretty quick emergency situation. After that, we had 4 weeks in the NICU. Ada was three pounds when she was born, you could fit her in two hands cupped together. She had three things she needed to work on before she could leave – breathe on her own, maintain her own body temperature and take fluids via her mouth. To begin with she was in an incubator, on oxygen and being fed through a tube down her nose. Those first few days were tough. But, even now I don’t like to play my own tiny violin about it because, ultimately, she came out – and so many babies don’t get that. The nurses and doctors of the NICU provided constant support. They were never too busy, never too tired to answer my questions or nightly calls at 2am to check on how she was doing. And they must have been both very tired and very busy.”
