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For the first six months of 37-year-old Kim Vaughan’s pregnancy, everything proceeded normally. Vaughan was pregnant with fraternal twin boys and all set to deliver both of her children around Christmastime.
In her 24th week of pregnancy, however, Vaughan began to develop back pain severe enough that she asked her partner, Simon Gilbert, to take her to the hospital. Doctors sent her back home, saying she would be fine.
But the next day, Vaughan woke to her waters breaking. She was giving birth prematurely.
“The room was so ghostly, even though it was filled with people. It happened so quickly, but it felt really slow at the same time,” Vaughan recalled.
Her son, Raiden, was born unable to breathe. Doctors tried everything they could to resuscitate him and save his life, but he simply couldn’t breathe on his own. Just a few hours later, Raiden passed away.
Vaughan, Gilbert, and the doctors remained in the room, waiting for the arrival of the second child – but he refused to come.
Not long after Raiden’s birth, Vaughan’s contractions and pain all came to a stop. Doctors would have to induce her again if they wanted to have her give birth to her second child at that moment.
Vaughan and Gilbert were then transferred to a special premature baby ward in a nearby hospital to remain in safe spaces as they waited for the arrival of their second child.
Finally, six weeks later, the familiar sensation of her waters breaking came over her again. She and Gilbert returned to the hospital and Dylan, their second child, was very quickly born.
Doctors immediately placed him in an incubator to stabilize his health; he’d been born with bleeding in his brain, a faulty heart valve, and chronic lung disease. Doctors weren’t sure if he would survive – but Dylan ultimately pulled through.
For two weeks, Vaughan and Gilbert could only sit by their son’s side, reading him The Hobbit and reaching their hands in to touch him on occasion.
It was only after Dylan had spent an entire month in the high dependency unit that doctors cleared him, declaring him well enough to be kept at a hospital much closer to home, no longer in need of the special support.
Vaughan and Gilbert couldn’t be more thrilled to have their son return home with them just in time for Christmas, “It was a great Christmas present.”
