Today is World Prematurity Awareness Day, a day to stop and think about those babies born too soon.

I write about prematurity regularly on this blog and work hard to support Bliss and the fabulous work they do supporting premature babies and their families.

I have blogged in detail a day by day diary of our time in NICU and SCBU with Esther and William. The 59 long days before we were finally allowed to bring our babies home.

I can often be heard ranting on this blog about the loneliness and anxiety of being a preemie Mum.

Being Mum!

But today, I want to take a different view, and share with you some of the magic of giving birth to our twins at just 27 weeks.

Comfort and Joy

Of course I can do this because Esther and William were born at excellent weights for their gestation and sailed through their care without a hitch.

In almost 14 months we have had no readmissions to the H place and I am hoping that we can keep it that way.

Esther and William are our miracle babies, they have fought and won against all the odds.

Now at almost 16 months you can’t really tell that they were prem at all apart from the fact they are tiny and if you look really closely at their feet you can still see the little prick holes from their numerous blood tests.

Having Esther and William so early was incredibly hard and I would not want to go through that time again but there are some moments I can cherish and I thought I would share them with you today.

When William was born his eyelids were still fused shut and it was a wonderful honour to be there when they opened for the first time. Here he is trying to get them unstuck!

Esther and William always had hiccoughs in their early days as they would have done inside. They were learning to breathe, their lungs were developing and I was a witness to this miracle growth.

They could not regulate their own body temperature and lived their first few days and weeks in an incubator where conditions were kept warm and damp to prevent damaging their fragile skin.

Red skin

Esther and William were a very dark pink colour when they were born, almost red. This was because their skin was very thin and they did not have any layers of fat. They looked like miniature muscle men. You could see how their body was made up. As they gradually gained weight and built up those all important layers of fat they became a more familiar pale pink colour. It was a slow process as it would have been in the womb.

Pretty in Pink x

We were very lucky that because of my pre birth trauma I had been given the steroid injections needed to speed up the development of Esther and William’s lungs. This meant that they only needed ventilation for 6 hours after their birth. Our clever little babies could breathe on their own but needed the assistance of CPAP to make the breathing require a little less effort. Watching them breathe though, it still looked like very hard work to me.

I used to worry about a deep crease at the bottom of their backs in the early days of Esther and William’s life. I now know that this crease would form their bottom their were just no cheeks there yet!

Baby Bottom

Both babies were very hairy in those earliest of days, I noticed every day that the hair was a little less as they shed that protective layer.

There are so many negatives that I can dwell on from our time in NICU but today I want to celebrate that my premature babies are alive and well and I have watched them grow through the third trimester. What a wonderful gift for a mother, to know how their baby has grown.

But Little Bump Number 3, if you are listening, I have seen it now thank you, so you can stay safely tucked up deep inside.

At 27 weeks babies have an 85% chance of survival. I will always be thankful that Esther and William were in that 85%.

Today is World Prematurity Awareness Day.

Please take a minute today to understand prematurity a little better, how and why it comes about and how it affects the babies and parents concerned. Please think about what you might do to make a difference for those babies who are just born far too soon x