Julie Helen: 'When I was born at 29 weeks, I was a medical miracle'

Earlier this week, World Prematurity Day crossed the calendar. I started seeing countless photos of extra tiny baby feet on social media and something quite stark struck me. Most of these babies were born even earlier than me and survived and are living and thriving. This would be pretty unremarkable, but when I was born at 29 weeks 40 years ago, I was the smallest baby to survive from the Bon Secours neonatal unit before it closed. I was a medical miracle at the time and I’ve always known how precious my life is.

My prematurity gave me cerebral palsy, it is part of the story. Imagine if the story was that I hadn’t survived.

In recent days, I’ve seen photos of babies born at 24 weeks now surviving and thriving. That is just mind-blowing to me, a whole five weeks less in the womb than I had.

Medical science has leaped forward so much in my lifetime that if I was born today, I may not have experienced the lack of oxygen to my brain that caused my cerebral palsy. Actually, how I think of it is; the 24-weekers of today are living because of parents like mine, because of the doctors and nurses who cared for me with innovation and determination.

My Mum and Dad never gave up on me. They willed me to live for the nine weeks I spent in an incubator. Mum visited the hospital daily a number of times to feed me. 

When I had my own son, and Dad came to the hospital the day he was born, he said “He’s huge compared to you”. He went on to tell other visitors of how he could hold me in one palm. He didn’t realise it but as he told the story, he was holding one palm up as if to demonstrate and had Ricky in the crook of his other arm nestled safely.

Even in the aftermath of having an anaesthetic, I had the presence of mind to snap a quick, blurry photo on my phone. For my Dad in that moment, 35 years had melted away. When he speaks of how tiny I was, he gets a particular look and over the years I’ve come to know a chunk of it is pride, because I’m still here with a great life all of my own.

I often think how strange it must be for my Mum to visit the same hospital that she gave birth to us all in, for cancer treatment. She doesn’t dwell, she conquers.

She has given me such a glimpse of the incredible strength and resilience she had when I appeared almost three months before my due date. I can feel that love without remembering it. It has carried me to where I am today.

I was lucky to always know one of my special care nurses in the neonatal unit, Joan, because she lives near my family home. Growing up, I would meet her and she would often become emotional at my progress. I found it fascinating that she cared so much but her excitement met an all time high when I became a mother too.

In a beautiful coincidence, one of the nursery nurses in CUMH, Trish, was chatting away with me one day and she realised she had been a student nurse in the Bons when I was born. I was so fragile she wasn’t allowed to touch me but she had always wondered how my story played out. Her next part in our story was to give Ricky his first bath. I felt lucky to make such a connection.