Baby Jack Frost is on track to go home this week, four months after he was born but just days before his original due date, December 21.
Jack’s mum, Vicki Frost, went into labour at just 23 weeks and she was told by doctors at Nelson Hospital that they wouldn’t try to save her baby, he was just too young.
But four harrowing months on Jack is healthy, happy and ready to go home for the first time.
The incredible journey that Jack, along with Vicki and her husband Marty, have been on has not only touched their friends and family, but the 3000 Facebook followers that Vicki’s page has attracted.
She says writing the daily updates of Jack’s battle has “kept me sane”.
The story starts around three years ago when Vicki – a local school teacher in her mid-30s – was told she was going through menopause and the chances of her getting pregnant were around 2 to 5 per cent.
A week after she found out she was pregnant, in March this year, Vicki started bleeding heavily. She went in for a scan and her uterus was full of blood. Doctors told her that she probably wouldn’t be able to carry the baby.
She says those weeks were “horrible” she was constantly sick but the bleeding slowed and by week 13 the doctors said she was back on track. “But I felt that it wasn’t,” she says. “I felt things weren’t going well at all.”
At 21 weeks, while at a school sports tournament, Vicki’s waters broke, so she was rushed to hospital. The very next day she got the flu and was in isolation for ten days at Nelson Hospital.
There she was repeatedly told that the baby wouldn’t survive if she gave birth before it had reached 24 weeks. “So it was pretty awful, I was so sick and trying to deal with this. We didn’t think we’d have a live baby then because it was another two or three weeks before we got to the 24 week mark.”
At exactly 23 weeks Vicki went into labour and they prepared to say goodbye to their baby.
Then a call was made to Wellington Hospital specialists and they were prepared to take the Frosts – if they wanted to go. “So it was completely surreal how everything changed. We really, really didn’t want a baby that had to fight for the first few months or years of his life, because it’s not fair on the baby. As much as we desperately wanted a baby, we didn’t want it at the expense of a baby having a miserable life.”
They decided to give it a go and Vicki was given drugs to suppress the labour. Two days later, on August 26, she gave birth to Jack, all 712 grams of him.
Jack was rushed away with the doctors and his father, who was on hand to make a decision of whether to stop trying to save him if he was struggling too much. Vicki says even then she felt there was very little chance of Jack surviving.
But he kept fighting and fighting.
Even after five weeks of everything going well, Vicki says nurses were still telling her not to get her hopes up. “I cried a lot, I spent a lot of time in tears. It was my only chance to have a baby and I really wanted to do what I could, but not at the expense of a miserable life.”
Jack has had plenty of obstacles to overcome, including complications with his stomach, eyes, veins and lungs. But he’s come through them all and the prognosis for a normal, healthy life is excellent.
Vicki says through the whole ordeal, her blog on her Facebook page has been a surprising source of strength. “The funny thing is I’m not big on Facebook and definitely not a public person, but we were getting so many text messages I decided to make a page with updates to keep people informed without having to constantly send text messages.
“It was really just to let friends and family know and it just took off. It was really bizarre.”
Vicki is hoping this week to write her favourite post yet. A picture of her young family in their own home for the first time.
