Oscar nearly joined us at 26 weeks after a major bleed (I had placenta praevia) but the bleeding stopped, I was given steroid shots to mature his lungs and so the wait began.

We had a few more trips to hospital after that but finally on Feb 12th the doctors decided I was staying in until the baby arrived as it was too unstable. At that point I’d bought him nothing, had no hospital bag packed and my husband was spending all his time looking after Zara who was only 14 months at the time.

That weekend was chaotic and it really was just waiting for the doctors to decide enough was enough. On Monday 14th February at 16:28 Oscar was delivered by emergency c-section. I was under general anaesthetic and lost 3 litres of blood. From reading his notes I later found out Oscar arrived blue and floppy and it took them 5 minutes to get him breathing.

It was probably a rougher road for me recovering than it was for Oscar. Apart from jaundice and needing to be tube fed he had no other complications and soon mastered breast feeding and when he was 16 days old he was allowed home.

Oscar is now 9 months old (7.5 months corrected), loves his food, is in 9-12 month baby clothes and a happy content baby most of the time. People wouldn’t believe he was a preemie if they see him now