On 7th October 2016 (my son's 5th birthday), I had an AVM (Arturo Venous Malformation) rupture. I was 20 weeks pregnant at the time. The ambulance crew thought I had pre-eclampsia. I was blue lighted to hospital. They performed an MRI and realised it was an AVM, they also said that they couldn’t deal with me. So I was blue lighted to another hospital 1.5 hours away. They operated on my AVM, sitting up so I didn’t squash my baby. In hindsight it was really good because a pregnancy is not considered viable until 24 weeks. I was only 20 weeks pregnant. It was the first in 22 operations that I had on my head/brain. On 9th December I had a cardiac arrest. In ICU they had put a tracheostomy in situ. My tracheostomy fell out or I pulled it out in my unconscious stupor. I was officially dead for 6 minutes, whilst they bump-started my heart.

On 25th December (Christmas Day) the ICU Dr’s decided to deliver my daughter. We both had sepsis. Our temperatures were spiking and the Dr’s decided that they could treat us better separately. So our daughter Phoebe was delivered 9.5 weeks early by Emergency Caesarian Section. She spent 9 weeks in NICU. She finally came home and my mum-in-law moved in, to help my husband with our 5 year old son, and new daughter. I don’t remember meeting my daughter until she was about 3 months old.

I finally came out of hospital on 6th November 2017. In February 2019 my daughter had a huge haemangioma on her face. She had it removed at Great Ormand Street Hospital, they did such a marvellous job. She has a scar. But it is so much better than the massive haemangioma. At Leicester Royal Imfirmary they scanned Phoebe all over her body, because you can get haemangiomas on your internal organs. She didn’t have any more haemangiomas, but they did find that her left kidney operates at 85% and her right kidney operates at only 15%. She now has outpatient appointments at the Nephrology (kidney) Clinic.

She is 4 years old now. She’s due to start school in September. She’s an ordinary 4 year old girl now. Although she did have a difficult start in life. She was very small in the beginning, but now she’s caught up with her peers.

Katherine Boulton Katherineaboulton@sky.com Yes Yes