Bradley Dunnett
Hello, my name is Ann Meadows and here are some photographs of my very special son Bradley Dunnett who was born on 31 May 2001 and spent 3 ½ months in Special Care.
When I went for my 12 week scan I was informed that I had fibroids which I was not aware of, I have been on medication for high blood pressure for many years and was told to stop taking the tablets straight away as they could cause babies to be born small. As my pregnancy progressed my fibroids grew bigger and were taking up a lot of room inside me. Because of my problems I was told I would probably need a caesarean and with the high blood pressure I was expecting to have my baby slightly earlier but it was a real shock to go for a 30 week scan and be told they would be delivering the baby in the next two days as he had stopped growing and they expected him to weight only 1 ½ lb.
On the morning of the operation I was quite excited and was looking forward to seeing my baby but because I had to have a general anaesthetic I didn't get to see Bradley until the next morning (23 hours later). When Bradley's father took me in a wheelchair to the Special Care unit we had to wait in the corridor as the doctors were in Nursery 1, because of this I broke down in tears and it felt like it wasn't my baby in there. When I eventually went in to see him I couldn't believe how small he was, he weighed 1lb 6oz, he reminded me of a tiny baby bird which had just fallen out of a nest. He looked so fragile and much smaller than I imagined him to be.
Bradley was actually breathing for himself when he was born, after a few days the doctors were concerned because he had a swollen belly and put him on a coarse of antibiotics and told me that if they didn't work he may need to go to Cambridge for an operation. I was really shocked and very upset by this, I was terrified that he would die if he had an operation, especially as he only weighed 1lb 6oz. Luckily the antibiotics worked and within a week he was ok.
Bradley was eventually fed with some of the milk I had expressed, I couldn't produce much milk so this was topped up with donor breast milk and then later a mixture of expressed and formula milk. He took a long time putting on weight and even now he puts the weight on very slowly. It was such a relief when Bradley was moved from nursery 1 to nursery 2, it made me feel so relieved that things were starting to go well, however Bradley had problems with his breathing and needed more oxygen, after a couple of days he was moved back to nursery 1 again and put on CPAP. Eventually he was moved to nursery 2 where again he had yet another setback, this time he caught a chest infection which I blamed myself for as I had a sore throat and a bad cough. Bradley then had to go on the CPAP machine and then on a ventilator for 24 hours, this was the only time he ever went onto a ventilator. He did get over this setback quite quickly and apart from travelling to Norwich for a double hernia operation, Bradley came home on September 12th (his dad's birthday).