By GEORGIA WESTGARTH
A NORMAL visit to the doctor turned out to be a life saving trip to the hospital which saved pregnant mum Shanae Taylor and her premature son Oliver.
The Cranbourne mother of two could have been hours away from a seizure if her doctor hadn’t picked up the signs.
“It wasn’t even a planned check-up I went to the doctors to get a letter to approve leave from work and my blood pressure was shockingly high, due to pre-eclampsia,” Ms Taylor said.
At 29 weeks, baby Oliver was rushed into the world by caesarean birth due to the life-threatening condition – something Ms Taylor describes as scary, foreign and worrying after naturally giving birth to her first child, Isabella, four years ago.
“I made sure I was awake to experience some of it, I remember asking if I would hear him cry and they said they couldn’t promise that, but I heard a little cry – it felt like an out-of-body experience because it all went so fast,” Ms Taylor explained.
“They held him up for a second and showed him to me and whisked him away and put him on life support – it was all really hard and I felt pregnancy grief because I knew what it was like after giving birth to Isabella.”
The experience left Ms Taylor in an unexpected and terrifying situation – one that was made a lot easier with the help of the Life’s Little Treasures Foundation which supports families through a website, phone app and booklets in hospitals.
Published by a foundation dedicated to supporting families of premature and sick babies, Ms Taylor said the booklets were most helpful during such an awful experience.
“I used many things such as a bible over that period but the Life’s Little Treasures booklet had a lot of information relating to other peoples stories,” she explained.
After finding some support through the foundation Ms Taylor said getting involved in the charity since Oliver’s ordeal was very important to her.
“Oliver was in hospital for about 10 and a half weeks he came home two days before his due date because he had two brain haemorrhages, a hole in his heart and a heart murmur, an inguinal hernia which he had repaired and blood transfusions and oxygen support,” she said.
“If I didn’t have the support around me from my own family I would have reached out to the foundation more and I know some people don’t have that.”
The Taylor family will be walking in the foundations ‘Walk for Prems’ this October to raise money for the organisation.
“We have made a team called Oliver’s Army and the money raised will go towards providing more hospitals with booklets and giving families things like fuel vouchers because there’s so much driving back and forth to feed and visit after the birth,” Ms Taylor explained.
Now on the mend, baby Oliver will be pushed around Albert Park Lake in his pram on Sunday 25 October for the foundation that supported his mum during his very first days.
To donate to the Life’s Little Treasures Foundation visit www.lifeslittletreasures.org.au
