Scan Shows Baby Stopped Growing in Womb, Preemie Left Fighting for Her Life
The birth process has a way of making otherwise competent people feel utterly at sea, of forcing them to stop and wait for nature to take its course.
Yet complications are sadly common when bringing babies into the world, and problems with an unborn child inspire a peculiar kind of panic.
The Curwood family of Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, England, knows exactly what that feeling is like. When Briony Curwood became pregnant with her first child, she experienced all the usual happy anticipation even after an unfortunate fall at 29 weeks of gestation sent her to the hospital.
Though Briony was fine, she was shocked to soon learn that physicians planned to perform a Caesarian section on her.
“They told me … to prepare to give birth either that day or the next morning,” she told the Hull Daily Mail.
“I was excited at first because I thought I was going to see my baby. I didn’t know anything about prematurity as we always had 10-pound babies in my family.”
But when her baby, who she and her husband Mike named Ava, was born on December 19, 2016, she was anything but a bruiser. In fact, the little featherweight weighed in at a mere 23 ounces.
Doctors had delivered Ava early because scans had shown that she’d stopped developing at 22 weeks, a point considered by most in the medical community to be the absolute threshold of viability.
The Curwoods would later learn that a blockage in the placenta had left the preemie fighting for her life.
In fact, the battle for little Ava had only begun after she left the womb. While Ava got whisked away to Hull Women and Children’s Hospital two hours after her birth, Briony had to stay at Grimsby Hospital while she recovered from her procedure.
“I didn’t actually get to meet her for four days,” she told the Grimsby Telegraph. “It was horrible.”
There was good reason for Ava to receive specialized treatment at a different facility. The baby faced multiple issues, including undeveloped ears, a shadow on her brain, an umbilical hernia, and two heart murmurs.
Today, though, you’d never know that the nearly 20-pound girl had ever faced any difficulty. She shows almost no lingering health problems, and physicians discharged her to go home in November 2017.
“She’s got a slight problem with one of her eyes, but it’s very minor, and we’re getting that sorted in January,” Mike said.
“Health wise there is actually nothing wrong with her, which is incredible.”
“Last Christmas was absolutely horrible,” Briony added. “This year will be completely different. In fact, I’ve had my tree up since the end of November, because I just couldn’t wait for us to begin the celebrations.”
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