Knowing you’re going to be a parent for the very first time is probably one of the best feelings in the world and this couple from Lincolnshire, England was just absolutely thrilled when they learned they were expecting a baby.
Mike and Briony Curwood were extremely happy, and while the pregnancy went flawlessly for a couple of months, things suddenly took a turn for the worse.
Around 21 weeks after Briony got pregnant, the British couple scheduled a routine test in order to determine their child’s gender.
They were having a baby girl!
Unfortunately, the upcoming parents were in for a quite a shock just a couple of weeks later at thirty weeks of pregnancy.
Briony noticed that the baby girl wasn’t moving for a couple of days inside her tummy, and she feared that something had gone terribly wrong. When they consulted with the doctors, they immediately decided to take a scan of Briony’s stomach to see why the baby wasn’t actively moving anymore.
The diagnosis was as shocking as it was heartbreaking.
It turned out that their baby girl stopped growing altogether at 22 weeks of pregnancy. The ultrasound revealed that she wasn’t growing in the womb, something that is extremely rare according to the doctors.
The best course of action wasn’t to wait but to have the baby immediately so that she could grow outside of the womb. As you might expect, parents Mike and Briony were completely shocked.
“They told me I’d to prepare to give birth either that day or the next morning. I was excited at first because I thought I was going to see my baby,” Briony said to the Hull Daily Mail.
I didn’t know anything about prematurity as we always had 10lb babies in my family. But then I realized it was way too early and I got really scared.”
The medical personnel proceeded with a C-section right away to make sure the baby would be born healthy. Luckily, the procedure didn’t have complications and their baby girl Ava Grace was welcomed to the world.
Because she stopped growing at 22 weeks of pregnancy, Ava Grace was extremely tiny and only weighed about 1 pound and 7 ounces.
“She didn’t look like a baby. She looked just like a little doll. Her ears [didn’t] come out of her head properly.”
Even though the birth itself went alright, little Ava Grace was most certainly not out of the woods yet. We can’t imagine how stressful the days must’ve been for Mike and Briony.
“I asked if she would survive and they told me to take it hour by hour. Then it was week by week. But she was an absolute trooper and, to look at her now, you would never know all she had been through.”
Little Ava Grace never stopped fighting for her life, and even though she was plagued with a shadow on her brain as well as two murmurs on her tiny heart, she was able to leave the hospital after a couple of weeks!
To make it even more spectacular, Mike and Briony were able to take their newborn daughter home right before Christmas.
Ava Grace was born ten weeks early, but she’s now a very healthy and energetic one-year-old baby. According to her parents, she has a lovely personality and always shows off her smile. She’s currently still dealing with a small eye issue, but doctors should be able to help her with that shortly.
What a beautiful family!
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