Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
I never thought it would happen to me. My partner and I decided not to find out our baby’s gender, and I remember saying to people, “As long as the baby is born healthy!” We had no signs that our child would be born any other way.
I had a very normal pregnancy, and every scan and midwife appointment reassured us further that everything was going well. I started having irregular contractions on my due date, and two days later when the warm baths, paracetamol and hot water bottles weren’t helping, we drove to the Princess Anne Hospital in Southampton.
When I arrived and underwent the initial checks, the student midwife was unsure as to whether the Doppler was malfunctioning as my baby’s heart rate was too fast to detect. It sounded like a galloping horse and measured approximately 240bpm. Four internal heart rate monitors and machines later, my little girl was born.
All seemed fine with her newborn checks, and besides her slightly flushed red appearance, we thought we’d be taking our new baby home the next day.
Three hours later, our little girl went floppy and unresponsive. Her heart rate was racing once again, and she was whisked off to the NICU. We were terrified. After being relocated to another room, we were informed around six hours later that our little girl was stable for now in the NICU and they were still trying to diagnose what was causing her elevated heart rate.
They eventually concluded that she had supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). Seeing our little girl in her incubator in the NICU broke me in ways that I never thought possible. We were unable to hold her because of her breathing tube, feeding tube, and cannulas. But then I also felt like a fraud. We were surrounded by pre-term babies, many of whom had either had a long stay already or were only at the beginning of their NICU journey.
