Apprentice winner Michelle Dewberry gives birth nine weeks early
The Apprentice winner Michelle Dewbury has shared an update on her Instagram account revealing she is in neonatal intensive care with her son after he was born nine weeks early.
The 40-year-old gave birth to her son at 31 weeks. She has been documenting her journey since suffering from preterm prelabour rupture of membranes (PPROM), which is when your waters break before 37 weeks of pregnancy.
The TV star, who won The Apprentice in 2006, has now been moved to neonatal intensive care, which she described as “exhausting, draining and often very scary”.
Her most recent photo shares an intimate update beginning with “I am super proud and happy to share the news that I am now a Mummy!!”
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“My beautiful, tiny little man was brought into this world way too early (31 weeks) following further complications, but he is already showing that he takes after his mamma and is a strong, feisty little human,” Dewberry continued.
“Having got through my complicated pregnancy, I have now entered the next chapter on our journey, that of NICU.
“I wouldn’t wish NICU on anybody and certainly not in a pandemic. It is exhausting, draining and often very scary....Here’s hoping we graduate this chapter as quickly, as healthy and as safely as humanly possible.”
On 26 June, Dewberry, shared an update that her waters had broken prematurely, she continued to update her followers on how she was progressing.
In normal circumstances, your waters break shortly before labour, according to Tommy’s, but in Dewberry’s case her waters broke much earlier than expected.
Although this didn’t happen immediately for the new mum, PPROM can trigger early labour.
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After suffering from PPROM, Dewberry had to remain in hospital until the birth of her son. She explained she would have more than three fetal heart monitoring scans each day to monitor how the baby’s health.
In one of her posts she wrote: “One of the main questions with PPROM is when to deliver the baby. When is baby better out, than in?”
“With a ‘normal’ pregnancy, the answer to that question is obviously ‘keep them in for as long as possible’, but with PPROM it becomes different. It’s a constant balancing act of weighing up the risk (of infection etc) versus the risk of prematurity and the complications that brings.
“Hence every day is a series of monitoring and observations, looking for signs of infection and/or other issues.”
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PPROM occurs in around 3% of pregnancies and while it’s not always clear why a pregnant woman has suffered from it, there are some risk factors.
These include already having an infection, problems with the placenta and having a direct trauma to the stomach.
Tommy’s explains: “It is important to remember that PPROM is not caused by anything you did or didn’t do in pregnancy.”
If you think your waters may have broken, you should contact your midwife or labour ward and go to the hospital for a check-up straight away.
