My favourite midwife, Claire, opens the windows. Earlier on I had asked her if I could get an electric fan, I’m the only woman on the ward who hasn’t got one. As she walks past my bed she chirps in her strong Irish accent “I haven’t forgotten, just about to go on the hunt for one”. There is still an hour or so to go before lunch. Breakfast is always at six thirty. The cleaners usually do their rounds in-between breakfast and lunch, at around ten thirty. They are late today.

Watching the cleaners work is one of my favourite pastimes. Every day this week the same woman has cleaned the room I share with three pregnant women. The cleaner has a face like a slapped arse. She is grossly overweight, with short grey hair and wears an ill fitting grey uniform. It annoys me when she picks my things up without asking and moves them around so she can clean. But I love to watch her sweep.

She is using one of those massive soft bristle brooms. The broom is grey, it co-ordinates with her grey hair, her grey uniform and the grey floor. She manoeuvres the broom underneath my bed, into the corners behind the bedside table getting into every nook and cranny with skill and expertise. The sound the broom makes is barely there, but if you listen very, very carefully you can hear the bristles dancing across the floor. The sound sends shivers down my spine.

I have spent the last fifty three days lying in this bed, and weirdly I have grown to like the smell of disinfectant. For the first time this week the cleaner smiles at me. I smile back knowing that we are both exchanging sympathy smiles. Her smile says “I’m sorry you’re stuck in here, I wonder what’s wrong with you but it’s inappropriate to ask” My smile says “You poor buggar working here. Did you not have a dream? A goal? You must resent your life so much”.

I’m allowed to walk very short distances. The doctor, two weeks ago, advised me I can get in the lift, go down to the shop on the first floor, make my purchase and then come straight back to my bed. I am not allowed, under any circumstances, to break these rules. I fancy some Walkers chicken crisps. Claire has not returned with the fan yet, my bed is the furthest away from the window. I am itching to get outside in the sunshine.

Whenever I walk down to the shop, I usually just go down in my slippers. The visitors never seem to be shocked by this – there are usually one or two heavily pregnant women waddling about in there dressing gowns and slippers. Today, I put my trainers on instead of my slippers. I do this because I am about to be naughty, I’m about to break the rules. I am going to walk outside and sit in the sunshine. The short journey in the lift has already bought on a cramping pain in my pelvis, and I can feel a trickle of fluid between my legs as I hand the cashier the money for my chicken crisps and ribena.

I’m not worried though. I have been bleeding since the sixteenth week of my pregnancy. I am now thirty two weeks pregnant. Little trickles = nothing to worry about, huge gushes = get to a doctor now. I sit on a bench near the main entrance to the maternity ward, enjoying my picnic in the sunshine. Standing next to the bin is a very heavily pregnant young girl smoking a cigarette. I envy her. I miss smoking, which alongside walking, my doctor has strictly forbidden.

A cool breeze carries the delicious scent of tobacco; I inhale greedily before glancing at my watch. It is 11.50. Lunch is in ten minutes. I look forward to lunch, not because I am a greedy pig, because it is something to do. I realise I have been missing from my bed for over half an hour, and begin to hurry back to the lift. Standing by the lift is a tall man in his late forties holding a bouquet of flowers. We stand next to each other in silence.

Then it happens. Whoosh. My trainers are soaking wet. I look down at my feet, then look up at the tall man. His expression mirrors mine; open mouth, wide eyes. I begin to tremble. I don’t know if it is blood or if my waters have broken. It doesn’t look like blood. It looks like I have wet myself. I blurt out to the tall man “I haven’t wet myself. I think my waters have broken”. He doesn’t say anything, he is embarrassed or quite simply, he does not care. He gets out of the lift on floor two, I get out on floor four.

I’m stood at the nurses station for a few minutes before one of the nurses looks up and says “yes?” I have left a trail of my bodily fluids along the corridor and I am standing in a puddle. “Erm, I think my waters have just broken” I say in a voice I do not recognise. I’m not trembling anymore, my shoulders are now heaving. I can’t feel my legs. “You sure you haven’t wet yourself?” comes the reply. I want to pull the bitch across the desk and put her face in my crotch. Instead, I remove one trainer and pour the contents on the floor. Hysteria kicks in, I hiss “do I look like a fucking camel?”

The nurse tells me to go back to my bed, someone will come and look at me in a minute. I have been sat on the bed about thirty seconds and already the sheets are soaked. I stroke my little bump and say I’m sorry. Ten minutes have passed, and nobody has been to see me. The woman in the bed next to me asks me if I’m ok. I’m laughing and crying simultaneously, “I don’t know what’s happening” I sob. I press the emergency buzzer next to my bed, trying my hardest to control my rapid breathing. Finally, after what seems like hours a midwife appears at the end of my bed. She tells me to take my jeans off and lie down. She begins to prod around down there and without saying a word she walks off. She returns with three more people. One of them is a doctor. I demand to know what is happening, the doctor tells me to “just relax”.

The doctor tells me that my waters have broken and there is a problem. There is meconium in the water. The baby is in distress and has done a poo. I laugh out loud at this, I don’t blame him for shitting himself, I’m shitting myself too. The midwife scowls at me. The baby is not due for another nine weeks. I know what is about to happen. When I was four months pregnant I was told I had a condition called placenta praevia with acreta. This meant that my baby would be delivered by caesarean section as it would be too dangerous to give birth naturally. I had also been told that it was about eighty percent likely that the baby would be premature.

I don’t have anything ready for him, I have no nappies or romper suits. I wonder what he will wear when he is born. The doctor explains that they are taking me to theatre as soon as there is a space. There is another complication. My condition is very rare. I am at a specialist hospital that makes babies with IVF, delivers triplets, quadruplets, premature babies, ill babies, but none of the surgeons working today have come across a complex case such as mine. Only one surgeon employed by the Birmingham Women’s Hospital has, but out of the thousands of babies he has delivered, he has only seen three born to women with placenta acreta.

For the first time in my life I experience real fear. My baby might die. I call my mom from my mobile phone. You’re not allowed to use a mobile on the ward, but the midwife says “go ahead, in situations like these it doesn’t matter”. Situations like these? What? What situation? Her words make me realise things really are bad. Mom turns up about forty minutes later. I have been moved to a small room next to the operating theatre. The room has lots of special gadgets. Four or five uniformed people are busy checking charts, taking my blood pressure and monitoring the baby’s heartbeat. I have started to haemorrhage. Blood is pissing out all over the bed, and I am experiencing strong contractions.

Under no circumstances am I allowed to push. If I push I will bleed to death, and the baby will die too. I don’t need to push thankfully, the contractions hurt but the various drugs they have pumped into me have started to ease the pain. I have had a cocktail of pethidine and gas and air. My mom is holding my hand and wiping the dribble off my chin. She is shouting to be heard over the beeping of a machine, asking the midwife every few minutes for an update.

Mr Chung is on his way. He is the specialist surgeon. He was out eating Chinese with his family, it is a Saturday night. I’m too far gone to care. The gas and air has made me giggle like a demented hyena. I tell my mom to remember to call the baby Harry. If she has to choose which one of us should live, she must save the baby. They wheel me off towards the operating theatre; I grab my mom’s arm and try to get off the bed. “I don’t want to do this” I scream. “Mommy I’m scared!”

She tells me everything will be ok. Her hands are covering her mouth and nose. She nods to the nurses and midwives, wipes a tear from her cheek then turns and walks away. “Mom don’t leave me. Mom! Please!” I shout after her.

In the operating theatre the anaesthetist is asking me how much I weigh. “Now? Or before I was pregnant?” I ask. He smiles and says “Now”. I tell him “about ten and a half stone. Please don’t let my baby die”. I’m told to swallow some liquid. I have never tasted anything like it, it is vile. It smells foul, I feel like I have swallowed acid, my throat starts to close up. I tell my baby “I shouldn’t have gone outside. I’ve done this”. I hope he can hear me. If he survives, I hope he can forgive me. I’m told to count to ten. I get to four.

It’s cold. I open my eyes and feel the kind of pain I will never be able to put into words. Can you imagine what it would feel like if an artic lorry drove across your stomach? That still wouldn’t come close. I’m wrapped in silver foil (that stuff you see around people when they have just finished running a marathon). I have an oxygen mask over my mouth, and a massive tube has been jammed into the side of my neck. My dad is standing at the end of the bed. I lift the mask of my mouth “Did he make it?” I ask. “Yes Vicky. He is beautiful”. My dad replies. He is crying. I have never seen my dad cry before.

“There is something majorly fucking wrong dad! This isn’t normal. I need some pain relief. I feel like I’m going to die. Why does it fucking hurt like this? Why ain’t they doing anything?” I shout. My dad tells me they had to do a hysterectomy. “Where is mom?” I bark. My dad informs me she is sitting by the window at the back of the room. I see her now. “Why is she sitting there?” I hiss. “I think she is too scared to speak to you at the moment” he tells me.

The midwife sits in a chair next to me and begins to explain everything that has happened. In the first ten minutes of coming round I have called her a bitch, accused her of not looking after me properly, and told her to give me more pain relief because that’s her job. The tube that is jabbed in my neck, she explains, is in an artery. It was put there during the operation, so they could monitor my heart and brain closely. The tube in my left arm is a morphine drip. She hands me a button which I have to press to dispense the morphine. It will only dispense morphine every five minutes. I don’t believe her. I keep pressing that bleeding button, and ask her for some pethidine. She turns to my dad and asks “Is she a medical student?” My dad shakes his head and laughs “No. She’s just a know it all”. In my right arm is a saline drip “to keep you hydrated” she tells me.

I was in surgery for four hours. She tells me that they had no option, they had to do a hysterectomy to save my life. The placenta (the organ that feeds the baby) was attached to my stomach wall. When they tried to remove the placenta I lost ten units of blood. They were putting blood into me at the top end, it was pouring back out at the bottom end. They had to whip everything out, my womb, cervix, fallopian tubes – all of my reproductive organs. I’m not bothered in the slightest about all this stuff; I just want to know about my baby.

My dad hands me a photograph taken thirty minutes after Harry had been born. He is tiny. He has a lot of fair hair which surprises me. His skin is perfect, a little blotchy, but perfect. He is wrapped in a blue blanket and lying inside an incubator. He has perfectly formed features – a button nose, long eyelashes and chubby cheeks. My dad tells me that Harry weighs 3lb 9oz, a good weight considering he is nine weeks premature. Harry had to be resuscitated when he first came out, but he has been breathing independently. Mom and dad have both been to see him in the special care baby unit.

I want to see him, but the midwife tells me it will be a couple of days before I’m allowed to. I am in intensive care, and have to stay here for at least forty eight hours.

Two days later they bring Harry to see me while I am still in intensive care. I’m not allowed to hold him, but I can touch his hand. He doesn’t look like me, he looks like his father. The irony upsets me. Harry’s father disappeared when I was twelve weeks pregnant. Harry and I have been on this turbulent journey together, and yet when he comes out he is the spitting image of the man who has let us both down.

Two and a half years have passed, yet I still remember every last detail of Harry’s birth. Harry is still on the small side but that was to be expected. He has white blonde hair and green-blue eyes. He doesn’t talk much, and it took him longer than most children to learn to walk. But, he is healthy; he has no deformities, no sight or hearing impediments. To strangers he looks like a normal toddler. When I look at him I see a miracle. I think about my hysterectomy every day. I have since married a man who does not have children. Knowing that I will never be able to give him a child is soul destroying. I want nothing more than to carry his baby, to create a life with the man I love.

But, I am here. I am alive. I’m able to kiss my son goodnight. Dwelling on the past does not change the future.