My little heartbreaker

The very thing that I so desperately wanted nearly killed me...

Pulling crackers on the empty Maternity ward...

Nicola Martin, 28, Swansea

Dressed in my woolly snowman jumper, I looked around at the smiling faces of my loved ones.

Each had on their own daft Christmas knits, were chatting away, laughing.

‘Pass us another pickled onion,’ I said to my mum, Caroline, 48.

December 2016. Just a normal family Christmas.

But instead of sitting around the dinner table, my lot were crowded round my hospital bed.

And our festive feast was a picnic of pickled onions, breadsticks, dips and turkey slices.

‘I wasn’t looking forward to spending Christmas on the ward, but this is alright,’ I smiled to my partner Ashley, 24.

Especially as I’d get the greatest gift of all at the end of it. A baby girl! I’d learned I’d been expecting five months earlier, in July.

Me and Ashley had been trying for ages and had been delighted when we got that positive test.

It was never going to be a straightforward pregnancy...

In April 2009, when I was 19, I’d been diagnosed with arrhythmia, a heart murmur, along with hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy, a disease causing the muscle around the heart to thicken and harden.

I’d been born with it, but it was only picked up when Mum had found me unconscious in my bed one night and called an ambulance.

I’d had a heart attack – but, thankfully, doctors had saved me and fitted me with a defibrillator – a small machine fitted in my chest that would send electric shocks to my heart if it sensed a change in my heart rhythm.

It’d kept me in good health ever since. Allowed me to live a normal life, meet Ashley and fall in love, get pregnant.

Doctors had kept a close eye on me and things had gone well – until December 2016, when I was 26 weeks and we learned that our baby wasn’t developing properly.

‘We’ll have to keep you in until the birth,’ the doctor had said.

But I wasn’t due until March 2017.

Which is how me, Ashley, Mum and my brother Sam, 21, came to be pulling crackers on the empty Maternity ward

on 25 December.

But next year we’d have an almost-1-year-old to celebrate with!

Because of my weak heart, I needed a Caesarean, which was scheduled for 32 weeks.

At 11.47am on 12 January, Amelia was born, weighing just 2lb 10oz.

Ashley was by my side through it all.

I caught a glimpse before she was taken to the Special Care Baby Unit.

Stitched up, back in my room, I was violently sick.

‘Just a side effect of the local anaesthetic,’ a nurse told me sympathetically.

Then Ashley wheeled me downstairs to meet Amelia.

That first cuddle was pure magic.

Amelia was perfect. She was tiny, but healthy. Just needed monitoring until she was stronger.

And two days later, I was discharged.

Amelia was transferred to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at Singleton Hospital, Swansea.

I spent my days by her cot,

having to be torn away to sleep each evening.

But three days later, asleep in bed in the early hours, I awoke struggling to breathe.

I shook Ashley awake.

‘Something’s wrong,’ I gasped.

All the next day I couldn’t catch my breath properly.

Finally, that evening, Ashley took me to A&E.

I was checked out and eventually moved to the Coronary Care ward, where I was put on a drip, given an oxygen mask.

And when the doctor told

me what had happened, my jaw fell.

‘You had heart failure because of the Caesarean,’ he explained.

‘What do you mean?’ I asked.

Fluid had leaked from my heart, was sitting on my lungs, because of the Caesarean. I was told it was one of the risks of a Caesarean as a heart patient.

I was put on heart-failure tablets.

If I hadn’t come in to hospital when I did, I could’ve died.

But all I could think of was Amelia. The thought of not seeing her again… If I hadn’t been pregnant, my heart wouldn’t have failed. But I had no regrets, Amelia was all I’d ever wanted. I spent a week in hospital. Unable to see Amelia, I was devastated. I sent Ashley to see her every day and called him via Facetime to see her chubby cheeks. Then nurses on the ward arranged an ambulance for me to visit her. I burst into tears as soon as I did, cradled her for five hours. I was allowed to go home a couple of days later. Five weeks after that, on 13 February, our little girl came home, too, weighing just over 5lb and getting stronger every second. Not only just in time for Valentine’s Day, but the day of Ashley’s birthday! The perfect gift, bundled up in her pink blanket, in my arms.

‘Welcome home, little one,’ I whispered.

Sadly, Ashley and I split last October, but we’re still on good terms.

We spent Amelia’s first Christmas at home as a family – me, Ashley, Mum, Sam, and my nan Averil, 83.

Amelia was spoilt rotten, of course!

She’ll be 2 this January, is quite the little lady!

I don’t know if I’ll have any more children. The risk seems too high.

Having Amelia nearly killed me but I really am lucky.

She’s my precious gift, all I need.

Her first Christmas – she was spoilt rotten, of course!