Baby Isla was born 18 weeks early and given only a 10% chance of survival. A year on, she’s thriving and has just celebrated her first birthday.
Lauren Ormston and Oliver Dewey were expecting their first child together in July last year. But their daughter, baby Isla, had different plans. Everything seemed to be going as it should until early March when Lauren was around 22 weeks pregnant.
She started experiencing severe abdominal pains and went to the hospital that night where doctors told her that she was going into labour and it was unlikely her baby would survive.
Lauren was taken to St Peter’s Hospital in Chertsey, southwest of London. She arrived at the hospital at 7.30pm and within two hours had given birth to her daughter who weighed just 535g.
She had a 10% chance of survival
“The birth was easy, and I only had gas and air”, Lauren said, but things were not so easy for baby Isla.
“I could only cuddle Isla for six minutes before she was taken”, her mum said. “She looked so small and fragile like she would snap at the slightest bit of movement”.
Isla was so premature she had a bleed in her brain and a hole in her heart and spent six weeks on a ventilator.
“I lived each day, never knowing if she would make it, day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute”, Lauren said. It was difficult for her parents to give her a cuddle because of all the tubes getting in the way.
When she was just two months old, she lost sight in one eye and surgeons were unable to fix it. But by her due date, on 12 July, four months after she was actually born, she weighed 4kg and was able to go home with her parents.
Now, a little over a year old. She weighs 7kg, can sit up and crawl and even stand with a little help.
“Looking at her now, you wouldn’t know she was premature”, Lauren said. “She’s a proper little madam now, she’s got her own personality, and is the most independent little girl ever”.
“[W]e live for each day because you don’t know what’s around the corner. We are just grateful for what we have, so grateful she was strong enough to defeat the odds and prove everyone wrong”, she added.
Right To Life UK spokesperson Catherine Robinson said “Isla is yet another baby born before the abortion limit in the UK. Such cases are a continued challenge to our abortion law, which allows abortion up to 24 weeks.”
