I had only just turned 18 when I found out I was already 9wks pregnant in March 2009. Premature labour never even crossed my mind once throughout my very short pregnancy. I was on holiday in the Dominican Republic with my family and boyfriend (after being checked by doctors to make sure I was alright to fly at 23wks). Four days into our holiday, my waters broke.

I didn`t have a clue what was happening to me and I was taken straight into a hospital where hardly anyone spoke English.

I was being injected up to 4 times a day and I was on a drip. Blood was being taken at least twice a day and I still didn`t know what was happening. All they could tell me was that my baby was going to die. I had lost all the amniotic fluid around the baby due to my membranes rupturing.

I later found out it was due to infection. What kind of infection, I still don`t know. The infection I had was serious, so serious that it could have killed both me and the baby. I was being pumped full of antibiotics, and after 3 days, my white blood cells were still sky high. I was told if the antibiotics still hadn`t made a difference in 24hrs, my baby was being delivered at 24wks, and the chances of him surviving were very slim, especially with the Dominican`s lack of equipment.

After 24hrs, my blood cells had eventually started to decrease. Four days later, I was stable enough to be transfered to somewhere with better care. An air ambulance then took us on a 5hr flight to Nova Scotia, Canada. When I arrived there, I got a little better understanding of what had happened to me. I was on strict bed rest, only allowed up to go to the toilet, as the slightest movement could put me into labour. They wanted to keep me pregnant as long as possible.

Eight days after I arrived in Canada, I was still pregnant, but I had woken in the morning with blood everywhere. I immediately thought the worst and I panicked. It turned out my baby had gotten his foot stuck in my cervix as he was so active and this was causing me to bleed, but I was no where near going into labour. My cervix was still closed.

The next day, I was eating lunch when I felt a cramp. I had went into labour. I was taken straight to the labour suite where I was kept in case it was false labour. Two hours later, the contractions were increasing in strength and my babys heartrate had skyrocketed. He wasn`t coping with the labour. I needed an emergency cesarean.

One hour later, my son was born at 6.20pm (Canadian time) weighing just 1lb 11oz at 2 days short of 26wks. One week after he was born, he took sepsis, a blood disease. Half way through treatment for that, he was then found to have pneumonia in his right lung and severe lung disease due to the ventilator he was on to help him breathe. He was switched onto an oscillator, and we nearly lost him. However, he fought through it. He then needed heart surgery when he was just 5wks old due to a PDA, an open duct in his heart that needed closed.

At 6wks old, they decided he was stable enough to be transfered home, even though he was not tolerating his feeds and his oxygen requirements from his ventilator were still high. We were then transfered from Canada by an air ambulance back to Glasgow, Scotland via Iceland on 1 September 2009. That 10hr flight was the longest flight of my life.

He is now 8wks old, and past the worst. He is off his ventilator and onto a CPAP. He`s now on 14ml of milk an hour and weighing 4lb 3oz. He still has a long way to go before he comes home as his due date was not until 25 October 2009, but he`s a fighter and he is definitely getting there.

It`s a long road, and for any other parents facing the same situation, hang in there. Your baby needs you. They`re all little fighters, and everything happens for a reason.

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