Roxanna - 3 Caesarean Births, Miscarriage, Heterotopic Pregnancy and Hydrocephalus

My first pregnancy was 2021 during Covid. 

My pregnancy was really good. I had a personal trainer 3 times a week and in general felt great.

Then on my 33 week scan everything changed.

My baby had hydrocephalus and had to be born ASAP.  I was admitted into CUMH and my husband had to pack my hospital bag. I had a C-section 6days later. As you can imagine I felt like my world was ending and I cried every minute of every day not knowing what to expect or even if my baby would survive. 

The Csection itself felt very formal. 

My son was born at 34 weeks and he was admitted straight into the neonatal. He was placed on a ventilator.  

He was moved to Temple street for 2 days where he had a VP shunt inserted to help to reduce the fluid in his head. 

After the operation he came off the ventilator and we spent another 20 days in CUMH neonatal unit.  

As this was during covid myself and my husband had to go in separately to see him.

Neonatal was such a strange experience.  You feel so lonely like you are the only person going through this horrific time but when you stop and look around there are a number of people in the same position feeling just as lonely.  

Our son is a little warrior he spent 29 days in hospital before we could bring him home. He is behind in some milestones but surpassed any and all expectations given by the doctors. 

For a year I thought there is no way I would ever do this again, I would not be strong enough to survive that experience again. Then something changed, I wanted another child. 

So we tried for baby 2.

I had 2 miscarriages.  It was awful I couldn't help but think I was doing something wrong.

I then got pregnant again and around 6 weeks started to bleed very heavily I went to the GP to find out why I kept miscarrying. He sent me straight to  A&E with a suspected ectopic pregnancy. 

Long story short with a few trips and hospital stays in CUMH I learned that I had a heterotopic pregnancy.  This is a rare occurrence when you have a viable pregnancy and an ectopic pregnancy at the same time. So I had to have keyhole surgery to remove my left fallopian tube. 

I remember thinking to myself no baby would survive this amount of bleeding.

My next hurdle was making it to 12 weeks to do an amniocentesis to test for the genetic condition that my first son has. I had this done in Dublin as they do them more regularly there and we wanted the best. The rest of my pregnancy was straightforward.

I wanted to try for a VBAC, that was my goal however my baby was so big I was advised they would let me go to my due date but not a day after.

So I had my C-section planned for 40 weeks. 

This was a much better experience the whole team just made me feel so relaxed. 

My 2nd baby was born 10lbs8oz and we were home 3 days later.

We then thought why not try again,  with one fallopian tube it will probably take longer to get pregnant..... 

My 3rd pregnancy was a walk in the park. I had no issues during pregnancy and as I had already had 2 C-sections I had to have another C-section. 

This time we were so relaxed.  The team was amazing and we had our little girl.

Roxanna’s first son in the NICU.