My daughter Lottie was born on the 24th March 2008 when I was 28 plus 5 days pregnant.

Lottie was 3lb 2 at birth and had to be resuscitated for 15 minutes and had to have 2 shots of adrenalin into her heart to get it started.

Lottie was then transferred to St Peters Hospital Chertsey NICU where she was ventilated for 1 day and then had CPAP for a further 39 days following that.

The consultants and their teams at St Peters told us that each day brings different obstacles for each baby to overcome, the biggest being infection.

When Lottie was 1 week old, following a day of my holding her with `kangaroo care` in which I held her for 5 hours my husband and I arrived on the Monday morning to tend Lottie`s cares when we were informed she had contracted an infection and was very sick. Antibiotics were administered via a canular and thankfully Lottie survived Sepsis.

When Lottie was 3 weeks old she was deemed stable enough to move from the Intensive Care Room to the High Dependency Unit - which was a huge milestone to us. There Lottie continued to grow and we helped to feed her via the ngt as she had not learned the sucking reflex.

Lottie was 4 weeks old when she was transferred back to the RSCH to grow.

Lottie spent 9 weeks in hospital in total and was allowed home on the 18th May 2008. A day which we all were so excited about.

Now Lottie is 15 lbs and is being weaned. She is our little miracle and we are so happy that we had such a good outcome as when we were in St Peters we knew of 4 babies who sadly did not make it for various reasons.

Lottie`s consultant continues to check her progress every so often and the physiotherapist having seen Lottie twice does not have any concerns at this stage so we continue to hope that Lottie develops as she should.

Lottie passed her hearing tests in hospital and also 3 eye tests and is such a delight to have around.

Further research is needed to offer answers as to why so many babies are born prematurely and what can be done to prevent premature births.

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