Whirlwind of emotions follows premature arrival

Two couples entered parenthood weeks before their babies were due. We learn how they navigated this worrisome time

Tue, 11 Nov, 2025 - 01:00

Helen O’Callaghan

“DO YOU know if you had a boy or a girl?” the midwife asked Fiona and Justin Bell, minutes after their first baby was born.

“We were just too overwhelmed — we’d completely forgotten to ask,” says Justin, recalling baby Sophia’s arrival at 29 weeks last May.

Just 24 hours earlier, Fiona had been in bed at 5am when she felt tummy cramps — a new sensation for the Dublin woman who’d been having an easy pregnancy. Just days earlier, she’d had a routine scan and was told everything looked fine.

The cramps were not persistent, but they were enough to make Fiona rethink driving across the M50 to work — instead, she decided to work from home. That she might be starting labour didn’t enter her mind — she thought these could be Braxton Hicks contractions, often called ‘practice’ but are not labour contractions.

She phoned a midwife friend, who recommended taking a bath and tracking the contractions: “She said it sounded like Braxton Hicks. They eased while I was in the bath. When I got out, I kept tracking. A little while later, they started coming every four minutes.”

Her friend said to go straight to the Coombe — Justin drove her.

Fiona and Justin Bell with their baby daughter Sophia who was born prematurely in May, 11 weeks before her due date. Photograph Moya Nolan

“They hooked me up to a monitor, did a scan, an internal exam — said ‘You’re 1cm dilated’. I was like ‘What? You’re joking.’ I couldn’t believe it,” she says.

Justin, out in the waiting room, recalls thinking ‘this isn’t good’ when the sliding door opened and his name was called: “I looked around, thinking it might be another Justin.”

Told Fiona was in labour, all he could think was they were in the right place: “I was trying to keep some sort of level head, because however hard I found it, it was way harder on Fiona.”

Staff explained they needed to prepare for two scenarios: Try to stop the baby from coming this early — but also prepare as if the baby was going to come: “They gave me a lung steroid injection, which would help the baby’s lungs if it did come early.”

In the high-dependency delivery suite, Fiona was 6cm dilated just hours later.

“They gave me a pessary, one last intervention to try to stop the baby coming. They were saying if we could have another week, another day, eventually it was an hour — to try to keep her in there as long as possible,” recalls Fiona, whose midwives reassured that her baby was not in distress. “We needed 12 hours between lung steroid injections. I’d got one at 4pm. All I could think was ‘I need to hang on ’til 4am’. I got that second injection — soon after, I needed to push. I got her out in 11 minutes from the time I fully dilated.

“She came out crying. They were able to put her on my stomach for a few seconds. Two brilliant signs she was doing well.”

Weighing 1.28kg (2lb 13oz), Sophia was in Nicu, in an incubator, for two weeks. Meanwhile, Fiona was expressing breastmilk: “I’d only get to hold her for an hour every second day. She was so tiny, so delicate, with all these tubes attached to her, as well as a CPAP mask. It was amazing holding her, but I was always on edge — she was so small.”

After about a week, Justin got to hold her: “It was brilliant — the warmth. It was skin-to-skin, so she’d feel like she was in the womb where she was still meant to be.”

In hospital for two months, Fiona recalls asking ‘Is this real?’ when Sophia finally got home. Because premature babies can go hours between bowel movements, Justin recalls the irony of celebrating “every time she did a poo — other parents probably hate it.”

Almost five months later, Sophia is thriving: “She’s smiling, her cries are getting louder. She was sleeping for so long — now she’s more alert. We’re loving it. And she loves to be held.”

The complete picture

When Ballymun mum-of-twins Eden Gannon’s waters broke at 30 weeks, hospital staff asked: “Are you sure you haven’t just peed yourself?”

They soon realised she was in the early stages of labour: “They gave me medication, hoping to prevent any more contractions.”

With the hospital concerned that a Nicu bed might not be available, Eden was transferred to the Coombe. She received steroids to fast track her babies’ lung maturity, allowing them to fare better if they did arrive early: “Then the doctors said these babies are making their entrance — we need to go with it. Their heart rates were excellent, they were relaxed — I was told I had ‘such well-behaved babies.’

“I was strangely relaxed — I felt being calm was my friend.”

Baby Fiadh, weighing 1.30kg (2lb 13oz) arrived first, Evie 13 minutes later — she weighed 1.45kg (3lb 3oz).

“Quite a good weight for 30-weekers,” says Eden. When they were five days old, she and her partner Shane, got to hold them for kangaroo care.

“There could have been a marching band, and I wouldn’t have noticed. I was just watching their breathing, their little movements, their fingers gripping onto my thumb. Just lovely — me with one baby, Shane with the other, sometimes we’d swap over.”

The babies were 37 weeks when they came home. Looking back, Eden can see positives and negatives to their premature twins’ seven-week hospital stay: “I felt a bit detached when they were born — I didn’t have that same interaction most mothers have. Not getting to hold them in the first days was a bit numbing; you feel slightly like an impostor.

“But I also knew my babies were being really well looked after. And I was getting to go home and have some quality sleep, which helped milk production.

“And we got so much help from the Nicu nurses — every day we were learning how to be parents to twins. We got time to adjust to what it’s like having two. And when they did get home, they slept so well due to their Nicu routine.”

Eden, who recalls feeling “like a proper Mammy” once they got home, adds: “Like the jigsaw pieces were finally matching up to complete the full picture.”

Seventeen months on from their June 2024 arrival, the identical twins are doing great: “They’re little characters. One’s like Scary Spice, the other Sporty. Evie would eat you out of house and home, Fiadh’s a little daintier. The play peek-a-boo at night if they can’t sleep — one ducks down under the covers and then pops back up, the other [can’t stop] laughing.”

Fiona Bell brestfeeding her baby daughter Sophia who was born prematurely in May, 11 weeks before her due date. Photograph Moya Nolan

Babies are the boss

Anne Doolan is clinical lead of the Coombe’s neonatal unit.

About 900 babies are admitted here annually — slightly under half are pre-term, meaning any baby born before 37 weeks.

“Our smallest surviving baby was 22 weeks and four days. He has done very well,” says Doolan.

Naturally, every parent of a premature baby wants to know when they’ll take their baby home: “We encourage parents to think in terms of the original due date — getting home earlier is a bonus, but some babies do show off and go home at 35 weeks.”

Babies typically communicate about a week in advance that they are ready for home: “They’re able to take more feed by mouth, able to maintain their temperature in the cot. Babies really are the boss.”

The Coombe implements the newborn individualised developmental care and assessment programme (NIDCAP), considered the gold standard in care of high-risk babies. It tailors care to each infant’s unique neurodevelopmental strengths and goals — it is used during interactions with a baby to observe how they’re feeling so as to better support them.

Doolan says: “Even a very pre-term baby is a person in their own right. You wouldn’t expect to take blood from an adult without asking permission and being nice and friendly. We approach babies the same way – talk to them, say hello, let them know you’re going to take a blood test, make sure with their bedside nurse it’s a good time to do it.”

NIDCAP also appreciates that parents are pivotal — in the Nicu, parents can feel a loss of control over their parenting role: “NIDCAP helps parents learn and observe their baby’s behaviour, to see their strengths and sensitivities.

“It means parents are more in tune with their babies — and more confident in parenting.”