A baby born at just 23 weeks and four days, weighing only 561g, spent 130 days in hospital before going home. Her mum tells the dramatic story.
Lauren Helstrom kept asking herself “Am I a mother?” for the first few days after she gave birth and as her daughter was cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). It is also the title of her upcoming memoir.
Her daughter, Evee, was born in May 2022, but the real complications had started a week earlier.
“I started to have very severe abdominal pain and I was bleeding quite a lot. I had gone to the hospital five different times, telling them what my symptoms were”, Lauren said.
However, she was misdiagnosed with kidney stones.
“The sixth time that I had gone into the hospital, I knew in my heart something was seriously wrong”.
Lauren recounted her memories when doctors finally realised what was going on. She thought “There’s no way that this is happening, my daughter is healthy, she’s happy and she’s inside of me”.
“I could feel [my baby] move when they told me that we were going to the room for loss. Because of her gestation they told me that there was no chance of saving her”.
Lauren was in denial about what was really happening and said she had an out-of-body experience when they took her into the room for the loss of her baby. Even as she was going into the room, she could not quite believe that that was what was happening.
However, the reality of what was about to happen hit home when she saw the NICU staff and understood she was about to give birth.
Her daughter Evee, was born at 23 weeks and four days, on 1 May 2022, weighing just 561g (a little over a pound), and she had to spend 130 days in hospital before she was discharged on 7 September 2022.
While Evee was in intensive care, Lauren’s most important question for the staff was whether she was “setting up a nursery or are we planning a funeral?”.
Lauren began to hope that everything might be alright about a week before Evee was discharged, but realised that once she left the NICU “the struggles just start”.
“NICU staff told me that this was going to be a rollercoaster, and it most certainly was” she added.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it without my parents, and the NICU staff, especially the NICU nurses”.
“They are angels in scrubs”.
Spokesperson for Right To Life UK, Catherine Robinson, said “Stories like Evee’s remind us of the strength and resilience of even the tiniest babies. Her life is a powerful witness to the humanity and value of children born at the very edge of viability”.
