Miriam Hamiliton considered having an abortion when she was told her foetus was not growing properly and might not survive to birth
ON THE day that Miriam Hamilton was to undergo an abortion in the UK to terminate the life of the foetus that she and her husband Colin had named Caroline, something happened to make her change her mind.
Caroline, who was severely underweight for her gestational age of about 19 weeks and was in danger of not making it to a viable birth weight, was more active in the womb than usual.
“That day, Caroline just would not stop moving,” says Hamilton. “It was a weird feeling. I began to think that she was okay and that the predictions of the doctors were not going to come true. I had a strong sense that abortion would be the wrong thing to do. Colin felt the same. It was almost as if there was a message from Caroline to me.
“Whether it was just a biological reaction to my high adrenalin levels caused by stress coursing through my veins, I don’t know. But I just got a strong sense that we couldn’t go through with the abortion.”
Now that Caroline is a normal, albeit tiny, three and a half year old, Miriam looks back and says the planned abortion “now seems insensitive and horrible. We panicked on a couple of occasions. With three young boys, we wondered how we would manage if Caroline was born severely disabled.”
Hamilton, a biology teacher in Limerick, has written a book, Sweet Caroline, which tells the story of her crisis pregnancy. Born full-term weighing two pounds, nine ounces, there were fears Caroline wouldn’t survive.
A scan revealed that the baby had IUGR (intrauterine growth retardation). Treated at St Munchin’s Hospital in Limerick, Hamilton travelled to another hospital for a second opinion.
“Specialists there told me that Caroline had possibly only three weeks in the womb to live. They felt she wouldn’t make it because her growth was so retarded.”
When Caroline was approaching 24 weeks in the womb, there was an opinion that her likely birth weight would be that of a baby of just 17 weeks’ gestation.
“I was also told that even if Caroline made it to 37 or 38 weeks, she would weigh only about a pound and a half. But she picked up in the last few weeks. Whether that was due to my hospitalisation and bed rest, I don’t know. The medics said that if she did make it, a form of dwarfism was highly likely but that didn’t happen.”
Hamilton, who was 37 when pregnant with Caroline, had a placenta that wasn’t functioning properly. “But it wasn’t bad enough to have warranted the growth retardation that Caroline suffered. We always felt there was something else going on. We found out that she has a deletion in chromosome 22.
“At some stage in her gestational development, one section of chromosome 22 may have been there and broke off or it may never have been passed on. There was a missing segment. But her own enzymes dealt with the repair of DNA.
“There are a lot of people with chromosome glitches that their own bodies repair. We still don’t know if the chromosome glitch is the cause of her growth retardation. We think it’s a contributing factor.
“Caroline has had more DNA sent away to Belgium and the Netherlands. We’ve had all the tests done and Caroline is coming out of them as a perfectly normal child.”
Although very small, everything is in proportion. Miriam says Caroline looks like a child of two to two and a half years.
“When she was born [by Caesarean section], she didn’t look great. Her skull looked much bigger than her face because she had no fat. She was starved. That was linked to the placenta’s insufficiency.
“She had brain sparing whereby nutrients and oxygen were diverted to her head. That’s why her head looked big. But the brain sparing actually saves the brain and means that intellectually, she has a better chance.
“I describe in the book how emaciated she was when born. There was a lack of fat on her bottom and there were no labia. But now, she looks perfect. Everything has grown. All her bits are normal looking now.
“She’s a normal little girl except she’s at the lower end of the height scale. She’ll probably grow to four feet, 10 or 11 inches. She’ll be petite and narrow.”
Caroline is a feisty child. “She’s tough and makes the most noise in the house. Her motor development and intellectual development all seem fine. She’s very physically active.
“She’s a little bit compromised in terms of immunity and picks up chest, ear and kidney infections. That happens when a child has a low birth weight. She will go to play school in September.”
Hamilton sings the praises of consultant obstetrician, Dr John Slevin.
“He was very careful in the way he worded things and gave us phenomenal time.
“I was a public patient and didn’t expect to be treated as well as I was.
“However, I do think the hospital could have given me some space in a private room occasionally as I spent a considerable amount of time there.”
Caroline spent four hours on a ventilator before she could breathe herself. When she left the hospital after six weeks, she weighed between three and four pounds.
Feeding her was initially problematic but a public health nurse helped Hamilton and her daughter.
Hamilton hopes that when Caroline is older, there will be a right time when she will be able to broach the subject of her difficult gestation and the plan to terminate the pregnancy.
“It’s all there in the book.” Hamilton wrote it as a form of therapy for herself and in order to help other women going through traumatic pregnancies. That there is a happy ending is almost miraculous.
As Hamilton writes: “Caroline . . . is well and happy and having the time of her life after a terrible start. Long may it continue for our special and sweet Caroline.”
Sweet Caroline by Miriam Hamilton, is published by Mercier Press at €14.99.
