AnEdge Designs

AnEdge Designs was created by a mum to two premature babies. Hunter was born at 35 weeks & Deegan was born at 32 weeks. Rachael has a passion for graphic design work and now creates beautiful work for her clients. She uses her creative skills and offers invitation designs, web-banners, business cards, brochures, flyers and can even touch up your photos.

Rachael has designed quite a few ideas for L’il Aussie Prems. From our Premmie of the Moment border, members forum signature images to our latest website banner.

Rachael offers all L’il Aussie Prems members a discount on all her work. For further information and to see more of her fantastic work please visit AnEdge Design

May 2009 Bring….

Happiness and hope to all families of premature babies. We hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and New Years and to those families with babies who were in hospital through these special holidays, we were all thinking of you.

In 2009 L’il Aussie Prems will be highlighting parents of premature babies throughout Australia. We believe that parents are the amazing driving force behind every baby, sitting in the hospital for hours on end or visiting their babies whenever possible, mums expressing tirelessly so their babies can receive the best “medicine” possible for their children, being so strong in their journey to brining their babies home and other families going above and beyond in the cause for helping families and premature babies.

Stay tuned to find out what we are up to early in the New Year!

Premmie Parent - Pregnant Again “Pregnancy Is Over”!

Well we finally had our little boy! I made it to 36+6 weeks. It was an amazing achievement considering i thought so many times that i was going to have another premature baby. What an experience it was this time around, just everything about the pregnancy even though i was considered high risk.

I faced the fears that premmie baby parents think about after having a premature baby who wish to have another baby. The fear of “we will have another premature baby”, “will i have the same complications that i did the first time around”, “what are the chances” and the unknown of what the outcome will be.

Throughout my pregnancy as the weeks went by i kept wondering when things were going to take a wrong turn. After i reached 32 weeks i felt very relaxed and knew that “if” anything happened now the outcome would be so different to our first son who’s premature birth was at 27 weeks.

Towards the end of my pregnancy things started to change. My blood pressure started to rise and i was put onto tablets to help control the sudden rise. The rise wasn’t too serious as my results were 145/90 but the doctor felt that it was best to control it now. Apparently it is very common late in pregnancy to have a rise in blood pressure so it wasn’t anything i was stressed about.

For a month prior to our son being born it was believed that i had suspected PPROM (preterm premature rupture of membranes) only it was a hind leak so i wasn’t gushing water, i just felt damp everyday. When the blood results came back after my 34 week appointment it showed that my white cell count keep rising so i was put onto antibiodics to be safe.

Due to my white cell count rising it was decided that i was to be induced and our son was to be born at 36 weeks. I had fetal monitoring a few times a week and my doctor booked me in to be induced on Monday 27th October 2008. This time we were more prepared and my mother came from Sydney to be there for our sons arrival and my husband was in the room when he was born. Sadly he missed the birth of our first son due to him arriving so early. I have heard many stories of premmie fathers missing the birth of their children due to it all happening so quickly.

I have written a birth story about our sons arrival and will add it to the blog.

I am so glad that the journey is over as there were many times of “what if” & “when” will it happen but we made it so much further than our first experience and we are so ever grateful for the doctors & midwives that looked after my pregnancy so carefully at Monash Medical Centre.

Our sons name is Tristan and here he is:

Premature Birth/Babies Forum

Our premmie forum has become one of Australia’s busiest support communities for premature babies families & friends. Our forum has a member base of over 630 members from Australia and beyond so you can be sure to find other premmie parents in your state or even parents who had their premmie babies at the same hospital as you.

Our forum offers families support, understanding, parenting advice, hope, friendship and networking. Our members have many “meet ups” with other parents in the same state and some parents have even started their own premmie morning teas due to the lack of support in their area.

There are many areas on the forum where you can write about your premature babies and their journey. We have parents with premmie babies in NICU, SCN, high risk pregnancies, babies who have just gone home to premmie babies who are toddlers and in school so you can be assured that there are parents who understand your situation.

We have a specific area on the forum where you can write about your premature babies journey whilst going through NICU/SCN, you can have your very own parent diary, write about your babies milestone achievements or delays, post photos of your gorgeous children, ask questions or talk about your premmie baby in our specific gestation areas. There are specific areas when you can chat to parents who have had a premature baby between 23 - 26 weeks, 27 - 30 weeks, 31 - 34 weeks, 35 weeks +.

We look forward to seeing you on the premmie forum and becoming apart of our free fantastic premmie parent community.

www.lilaussieprems.com.au/premforum

Premmie Parent ~ Pregnant Again cont…

Well here i am at 32 weeks pregnant! I cannot believe that i am still pregnant after having such an early premature birth with Ronan.

A lot of things have been happening including still going to my high risk clinic appointments at Monash every 2 weeks and we actually found out the reason WHY Ronan came early after a few blood tests and an AMAZING doctor who is looking after me. She is just the BEST and i couldn’t have asked for such a more gentle person to look after me throughout this pregnancy. I am very blessed that she figured out what happened within 2 weeks and no one else even tried after 2.5 years!

The best way to describe the reason for Ronan’s premature birth was that my placenta was not working properly. My blood results that were taken recently indicate that i have a “spelling mistake” in my chromosones. Basically my placenta will absorb nutrients ie: folic acid etc.. but it does not know how to distribute the nutients, so my placenta pealed away which lead to “placental abruption” due to the lack of nutrients. With the placenta pealing away this triggered on the heavy bleeding and the sponateous labour. Apparently this condition/”spelling mistake” is something that is passed on from my parents. Unless tests were done we wouldn’t know which parent it was but due to my mother & sister not having any complications with premature babies/premature birth of their own it would be interesting to find out if it was from my dad.

I had a scan last week to check that bubs was growing correctly and apparently everything is going great. He was head down, there was plenty of fluid, the cervix was closed and bubs weighed approx 1.8kgs or 1800 grams so he was growing very good. Apparently around the 31 week mark most babies weigh approx 1500 grams so he is a chubby bubby! My doctor said that he would be around 7 - 8lbs when born. What a huge difference between that number and 2.8lbs when my little premmie was born. Gosh i hope i don’t have any problems delivering naturally due to having a BIGGER baby.

Here i am at 32 weeks gestation and still going strong. I am feeling really good this pregnancy, no swelling, no backaches, no complications. It does actually feel very strange to know that i have a “normal” pregnancy! This is not something that i thought would happen and everyday i keep waking up thinking “ok when will our little boy come, is it today”. Because i am anticipating another premature baby i am sure we will have a very healthy newborn which will be totally surreal but very exciting.

I hope that my little updates give those parents of premature babies a little hope that having another baby after having a premmie can actually go to plan. It all depends on your situation of course but if you do plan on having another baby be sure to book yourself into the “high risk clinic” at your nearest hospital so you are closely monitored. For the health of you and your baby and also for peace of mind they really do watch you and monitor everything along the way.

Here is a picture of my belly at 31 weeks!

Happy Father’s Day

Father’s Day: the media is full of images of happy, healthy children rushing to give their much-loved if slightly hopeless father a blokey gift, but when your little one is still in hospital the stereotypes are meaningless and all you really want is to have your child come home.

What is the role of a father of a premature baby? When my daughter was born unexpectedly early, my husband missed the birth completely - no magical memories of cutting the cord for him, he wasn’t even able to hold my hand. While I found myself on early maternity leave and able to spend all day in the NICU, he was still at work - sometimes far away. It made no sense for him to take his one week of paternity leave until we brought our baby home, at which point his employer initally refused to grant him the leave because it was more than 3 months after her birth!

My husband shared all my anxieties about Talia’s health, not to mention the broken sleep as I rose twice a night to express, without the joy and reassurance of being able to hold his daughter for days on end. He visited the nursery in the quiet of the evenings when the doctors were gone and the lights were dimmed, and sang her soft songs of love below the beeping of the monitors.

Now more than a year later, he still sings her songs. He holds her tight and reads her books, sits on the floor playing with her as soon as he gets home from work, pushes her on the swing in the park and rejoices in every little milestone. He knows how lucky we are to have her, and I know how lucky she is to have him too.

Pre-Eclampsia Awareness Week

I just discovered that this week is Pre-Eclampsia Awareness Week.

I had never even heard of pre-eclampsia until a friend of mine told me it was the reason she needed to have her baby delivered 8 weeks early, four years ago. To be honest, at that time I didn’t have any idea what she had been through. Since my daughter was born I’ve met a lot more women - mostly via L’il Aussie Prems - who suffered from this very serious and sometimes life-threatening medical condition and whose babies were born prematurely as a result. In fact even two friends in my new mothers’ group who were able to have full term babies also suffered from pre-eclampsia in the late stages of their pregnancy. It’s a lot more common than I had previously imagined.

The Australian Action on Pre-Eclampsia (AAPEC) has a website at http://www.aapec.org.au with a good FAQ and stories from people who’ve been through it personally.