I blamed myself after son was 12 weeks premature

A MOTHER whose son was born 12 weeks prematurely wants to help other parents who have gone through the same experience.

Rachel Merritt gave birth to Arthur in August two years ago at the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and he weighed 2.8lb.

He spent the first few months of his life in the high-dependency unit where he learnt to breathe and swallow independently.

Mrs Merritt, 34, who lives just outside Henley with husband Oliver, 35, a property developer and eldest son Wilfred, three, was then diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

The civil servant said her second pregnancy had been “progressing well” but, as the family were getting set to go on holiday to Cornwall, she felt her waters break.

Mrs Merritt said: “I said to my husband, ‘Oh, I think I feel my waters just went.’ It was said as a joke and I then packed for the holiday. But then I was like, “Oh, I’ve got a funny feeling again.

“I was very keen to just go to Cornwall whereas my husband said that we should get it checked out just in case because we wouldn’t want to have a baby in Cornwall.”

As a precaution, she went to the Royal Berkshire Hospital in Reading where the nurses confirmed that, at 28 weeks, her waters had broken and she was blue-lighted to the John Radcliffe Hospital.

Mrs Merritt was admitted for observation and the couple were told that going into labour was unlikely to happen soon. But then at 9pm she felt her waters break “monumentally”.

She said: “Arthur’s heart rate then dropped and suddenly I was whisked away and taken down to the delivery suite so they could keep an eye on us. Within a few seconds of arriving I was told, ‘We need to drug you up and get the baby out’ and I had an emergency C-section.”

Mrs Merritt made an emergency phone call to her husband, who had returned home to look after Wilfred, to say that Arthur was on his way.

She said: “Oliver walked through the door and, as they were putting crocs on his feet and dressing him up, Arthur was born at about 1.30am and was then whipped straight off to the neonatal intensive care unit.

“You’re petrified because you don’t really see your baby, so you feel quite disassociated from it. Arthur was put on me for a photo and then I didn’t see him for hours. It just felt really surreal.”

Mrs Merritt said she finally was able to visit Arthur at 8am the next day but then shortly afterwards he became ill with an infection.

She said: “I’d gone down to see him and they had done a test which had shown that he had an infection and so he couldn’t be fed. I remember at that point looking at him and thinking, ‘Oh, my God, I think you’re going to die. You just look so ill’. For those first few days he just looked horrendous.

“I can’t explain how small premature newborn babies are. I didn’t manage to get him out of the incubator myself for quite a few weeks because I was just petrified about doing it.”

Arthur spent a few days in intensive care before being transferred to the high dependency unit, where he remained for seven weeks. He was later moved to the hospital’s low dependency unit for another five weeks.

Mrs Merritt struggled with complicated feelings about her son’s premature birth, particularly while her husband was at home caring for their eldest son. She said: “It just is soul-destroying. You don’t see anyone, you just sit all day pumping breast milk into a tube, feeding your baby and staring at the walls.

“You go through it on your own and you have to listen to everything you are being told and make decisions while trying to remember everything they’re saying.

“At that point, I felt really responsible for the fact that Arthur was premature. I just felt like a failure. So, I think I threw that feeling of uselessness into pumping and trying to be with Arthur the whole time.”

Mrs Merritt began to write a journal after being gifted a notebook and pen from a friend, which she found helpful to work through her thoughts.

She said: “It initially started with me just writing about the medical stuff that had happened that day and what they were saying about Arthur. But as it went on, I felt the need to get some of my feelings out.

“In the meantime, Arthur progressed a bit but then he got a cold about a week in, which made him so ill. That set him back. His oxygen levels had to go back up again and so we were back at square one again. It did feel like that we were never ever going to leave the hospital.”

Arthur was finally discharged on November 13, a few days before his original due date. Due to his vulnerable condition, the family had to shield until his brother started nursery the following March.

Following his time in hospital Arthur was diagnosed with chronic lung disease due to spending a prolonged time on oxygen, which scarred his lungs. However, he is expected to grow out of it and make a full recovery.

Mrs Merritt said: “It was really tough but you don’t really realise how tough it is until you get out. I remember it hit me really bad in January and I was sitting there not taking anything in and feeling numb to everything.”

After speaking to a doctor and going on medication, she started to “turn a corner”. She also referred herself to Oxfordshire Talking Therapies, a free mental health support service provided by Oxford Health NHS Foundation Trust and underwent therapy for PTSD.

Mrs Merritt said: “It really helped. I had 20 weeks in the end and that helped me remove myself from the blame that I was giving myself for being responsible for what happened to Arthur.

“Before I would focus on all the stuff we had missed out on and how hard everything is but now I can see it differently and look at how far we’ve come.”

Mrs Merritt is now going to run the London Marathon in aid of Bliss, a charity which supports parents of premature babies.

It has campaigned for various legislation changes to help support families of premature babies, including the neonatal care bill which passed in 2023.

The bill means that parents can take up to 12 weeks of leave, in addition to existing parental leave entitlements, if their baby is admitted to hospital within the first 28 days of life.

Mrs Merritt said she was encouraged to apply for a place in the marathon in April by a friend who had also applied but was unsuccessful. She said: “It was his idea and I went along with it but now I think reality has struck that it is actually a really long way.

“I don’t particularly enjoy running, definitely not long distance. I’ve done a half marathon and I cried the whole way around and swore I’d never do it ever again.”

To keep herself going she has been listening to audiobooks while training which she has fit in around her work and homelife. She said: “I do a long run on the weekend and then try and do one short run in the week. I’m probably not doing as many runs as I need to do but I can’t really fit in any more, particularly in this weather because it’s dark late and then it’s dark early.”

Mrs Merritt has set up an Instagram page to help parents who are on a similar journey and may be experiencing similar thoughts.

She said: “Hopefully, it’ll just help people a bit just to understand it because they don’t cover it in baby classes, so you just think it’s this foreign world that won’t happen to you. People have reached out to me to say it’s been so helpful just knowing that these thoughts aren’t completely mad and irrational. That all of this is normal.”

Mrs Merritt said her son is “wild” and is thriving and that the whole experience has changed her outlook on life. She said: “I just feel very, very lucky. If people see me running around like a lunatic with my children in town, know that I’m not just a bit dysfunctional. I have just made a point since having them and since all this, that I am going to enjoy every second of time with them because we’re so lucky.”

To follow her journey, visit her Instagram page at @mylittleprem. To donate, visit https://2025tcslondon
marathon.enthuse.com/pf/rachel-merritt