I was told baby wasn’t ‘viable’ at 20 weeks, so went 300 miles to a new hospital – and look at her now!
When Cheri Price feared she was going into labour at just 20 weeks, she was told by her local hospital that such a premature baby would not be ‘viable’. Instead, her child’s birth would be treated as a late miscarriage.
So, desperate to give her unborn child a chance at life, Miss Price made a 300-mile trek – while suffering contractions – from her Isle of Wight home to a hospital with the facilities to help.
Following the gruelling journey, her daughter hailie was born at 23 weeks and six days – just one day under the 24 week abortion limit – weighing a tiny 1lb 2oz, at James Cook University hospital in Middlesbrough.
Despite a number of serious health problems, hailie survived and is now a healthy one-year-old.
Miss Price, now 22, was initially admitted with mild contractions to St Mary’s hospital in newport, Isle of Wight, and was told there were no facilities to accommodate babies born before 24 weeks.
The mother-of-three said nurses told her she would have to ‘ride it out’ and they wouldn’t be able to save the baby if she was born at that stage.
With no sign of labour starting, the pregnant mother was discharged the next day and carried on as normal.
But continuing discomfort and some bleeding made her decide to quit the island amid fears that staying would consign her baby to death. She travelled with her 11month-old son Jack and partner Timothy Dillon, 32, to visit his brother in the north east, where the required hospital help was available.
The journey by ferry to Portsmouth and then by train on February 6 last year took eight hours and Miss Price was battling mild contractions throughout.
She spent two weeks in and out of hospital, with drugs helping to ease the contractions. And then she finally went into labour and gave birth to hailie on February 23 last year.
The tiny baby failed to breathe for seven minutes and required resuscitation. Then two days later her lung collapsed.
Miss Price said her premature daughter ‘looked like a red alien’ at birth.
‘She was still in the foetus stage and she didn’t look like a baby at all, we couldn’t believe she even survived,’ she said. ‘From birth she was put in an incubator and we couldn’t touch her, but we could see all the veins of her brain through her red skin.’
The mother and Mr Dillon, a mental health support worker, spent three months at the Middlesbrough hospital as their baby battled to survive. her eyes were fused together and she had to be flown by private plane to Southampton for specialist retina treatment that saved her sight.
hailie was eventually allowed home on the Isle of Wight on June 19 – two days after her actual due date.
Miss Price said: ‘I would expect a hospital on an island with a boat trip needed to get to the mainland to have the capacity to have grade one level care... We just thought we would take the chance at a larger hospital.’
Describing her joy that her baby is now doing well, she added: ‘I’m so proud of her, what we’ve been through and what she has been through has been horrendous.’
‘Thought we would take the chance’