What nobody tells you about falling pregnant again after a premature baby

"When I tell people about this baby, the real answer to when they're due is 'we don’t know yet'. That uncertainty is difficult to sit with."

Image: Supplied

My son was born on 4 February 2022. As far as I’m concerned, that’s a great birthday - the weather will always be warm, and pool parties are on the agenda from now into the foreseeable future. 

It’s a great birthday, but it isn’t the one we expected he’d have: he was due on 31 March, born eight weeks premature because of my early-onset preeclampsia, and spent the 4th of February 2022 (and many weeks afterwards) in the NICU getting strong and well enough to come home. 

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He told me to Google '31-week baby survival rates'

When 31 March finally rolled around, we’d known our son for two months. Despite that, the date didn’t stop being meaningful: after all, from the moment I took my first positive pregnancy test and logged the date of my last period into an online calculator, my due date had been my mantra.

At one stage, my obstetrician considered pushing it back based on my son’s size in early scans. “It’s really up to you,” she told me.

“Most women don’t deliver on their due dates anyway”. No thanks, I said. I’d all but had my due date tattooed on my wrist at that stage.

When I announced my pregnancy on Instagram, with a confidence I can’t imagine now, I slapped on the due date like it had been confirmed with some kind of cosmic courier company: BABY BOY COMING 31 MARCH 2022! 

About 28 weeks into my pregnancy, when a scan showed my son’s growth slowing significantly, it became clear that my due date wasn’t a deadline but a goal. Very quickly, those goalposts shifted closer, and then closer again.

If we could just get him to 37 weeks, he’d technically be full-term. If we could just get him to 36 weeks, he probably wouldn’t need to spend any time in the Special Care Unit. If we could just get him to 35 weeks. To 34 weeks. To 33 weeks. 

Our baby boy was coming, but he wasn’t waiting until 31 March. 

At 31 weeks, I was injected with two doses of steroids to help my baby’s lungs grow. I was high as a kite at our impromptu baby shower, pulled forward weeks and weeks in a last-ditch attempt at normality. 

Only two days later, I was admitted to the hospital with the understanding that I wouldn’t be pregnant when I was discharged. I had one of the most frightening conversations of my life with a neonatologist, who explained how much every day inside my body mattered at this stage: how even 24 hours could be the difference between my baby needing to be ventilated, having ongoing issues with his heart, his eyes and his lungs.

He told me to Google “31-week baby survival rates”, apparently in an attempt to comfort me. This was a misstep: the statistics were worse, not better than I expected. I had been working on the assumption that my baby would survive. 

He did. Born via an emergency C-section at 32 weeks, one day, following a pre-seizure episode of high blood pressure which meant that there was no safe way for me to continue gestating him. 

Image: Supplied

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My next baby is 'due' at the end of November, but I know better now than to take that for granted.

In most ways, that experience is a distant memory. Everything about my son eclipses those first frightening weeks. He is so much more than his early birth. 

But this week, I’m announcing another pregnancy. My next baby is “due” at the end of November, but I know better now than to take that for granted. The risk that I’ll experience the same pregnancy complications again is high.

There’s a chance I won’t get pre-eclampsia again. There’s a bigger chance I will. There’s a small, but real, chance that my next baby will be born even earlier than my first. 

When people ask me my due date this time around, I’m cagey: sometime in November is the dream, but I’m thinking October, just to be realistic. There’s a chance it will be September, and that scares me, but not so much as the prospect that it could, conceivably, be August. 

I am an optimist at heart, and I feel optimistic about this baby. But optimism and certainty aren’t the same. In my first pregnancy, like so many first-time mothers, I was blissfully ignorant of the possibility that my baby would be born prematurely.

After all, I had an app, and my app told me I would be pregnant for 40 weeks. After all, the media I consumed told me most first-time mums actually go past their due dates.

After all, at some point in the distant future, I’d probably be bouncing on an exercise ball eating chilli and drinking special tea screaming “get this baby out of me!”. 

After all, at every ultrasound, my Estimated Due Date popped up on the screen, and that due date was a very, very long time away. 

Until it wasn’t. 

When I tell people about this baby, the real answer to when they’ll be born is “we don’t know yet”. That uncertainty is difficult to sit with. 

When I think about meeting my next child, I don’t know what the circumstances will be. I don’t know if we should be preparing for another stay in the NICU. I don’t know if he or she will be too delicate for their big brother to cuddle. In so many ways, it is out of my control. 

All I can do, for now, is tell this baby the same thing I told my first in those quiet nighttime hours we spent in the hospital, just the two of us, waiting to learn his birthday. 

Whenever it is, I can’t wait to meet you. 

Originally published as What nobody tells you about falling pregnant again after a premature baby