“It was extremely hard and just because our baby was a certain size didn’t make it less hard.” Hannah and Leo’s story #FullTermFeb

My son Leo was born in May 2025. I was so excited to have my baby in my arms after a tough time trying to conceive – it felt like a really long time coming. We didn’t find out his gender, so the whole pregnancy was full of anticipation and excitement.  

At 37 weeks I noticed Leo wasn’t moving as much. I went into triage and after some monitoring I was kept in overnight. One night turned into two. I had gone into early labour, and his movements still weren’t what they used to be. He was brought via cat 3 EMCS two days later.

Hearing Leo cry and finding out he was a boy when he was brought into the world was the most magical moment of our lives. The soundtrack to his arrival was ‘What a Wonderful World’ by Louis Armstrong – it was perfect.  

I was fortunate enough to be able to hold him for 5-10 magical minutes. My husband then noticed Leo had frothed a discoloured substance from his mouth whilst on my chest so he alerted the midwife. He was then taken away and all of a sudden had a group of people around him.  

The next thing I remember, a doctor was next to me telling me our baby boy was poorly and was being taken to NICU. I told my husband to go with him. I was taken to a recovery room to recover alone. It was the loneliest two hours of my life.  

Around 5 hours later I was wheeled down to NICU in my hospital bed. He was on CPAP. His oxygen was reading 88%. Nothing prepares you for seeing your new baby in an incubator with wires, tubes and oxygen. I was beside myself with heartbreak. I couldn’t even see his little face.  

Leo spent 10 long days in total in hospital. There were ups and downs every single day. It felt very odd having a full term baby in a room full of tiny babies. He was a very healthy 7lb 5, so he looked huge compared to everyone else! I couldn’t get my head around why things had ended up this way after such a healthy pregnancy. It felt so unfair in the moment.  

Those 10 days were truly the hardest of my entire life, especially after getting discharged from hospital. Every time I hobbled to the doors reading ‘neonatal intensive care unit’ I broke down in tears. I couldn’t believe this was my life and that the newborn bubble had been stolen from us. All those firsts I’d dreamt of had been snatched from our hands. I imagined the first days/weeks of motherhood to be me recovering in bed with my beautiful new baby, staring at him and doting over him. Instead, I was walking 5,000+ steps round the hospital every day after a c-section, breaking down constantly and going home every night to an empty crib.  

The NICU nurses were nothing short of phenomenal and they carried both me and my husband through those dark times. Every time Leo achieved something like moving down to Optiflow from CPAP or going from a cannula to a feeding tube to his first bottle they would celebrate with us. I will never forget them and their kindness. It really kept us going.  

After 10 long days, we brought Leo home. Seeing him in his car seat in his little outfit and hat was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen. We rang the bell and I sobbed. I just wished every parent in the NICU could have rung that bell that day too.  

Leo is now 8 months old. He is doing so well and is the happiest most beautiful baby boy. He’s not suffered any long term issues from his start to life which I am so grateful for.  

I struggled a lot with PTSD after his start to life. I still do struggle, but I have done a lot of healing and feel like I’ve come a long way. I don’t think my husband and I will ever fully put it behind us, but with the help of Leo’s smiles we are able to live a happy life and talk about it openly when we need to. Weirdly enough, the whole experience has made us love each other more. If I could give anyone any advice, it would be try and find little pockets of joy when you’re going through those hellish days. That’s how we managed to stay sane. If one of you has the strength to make a joke and make the other laugh or say ‘let’s grab a little treat from the shop upstairs’ do it.  

For a while I didn’t feel validated as a full term NICU parent. I didn’t feel like my NICU experience was considered as ‘hard’ as a preemie parents due to the fact a lot of preemies stay in hospital a lot longer than us. But now I realise that our experience was our experience. It was extremely hard and just because our baby was a certain size didn’t make it ‘less hard’.