A mum and dad got married alongside their premature baby as he fought for his life in the hospital’s intensive care unit after being born at just 24 weeks.
Alana WilkinsonShe, 33, and her husband Angus, 34, planned an intimate bedside ceremony for their son Rafferty at Brisbane’s Mater Hospital because they were unsure their firstborn would survive.
It was November 14, 2021. Rafferty had been born less than three weeks earlier and weighed just 704 grams.
The hospital was under strict guidelines on visitor numbers due to Covid-19, and Ms Wilkinson was determined to get married next to her newborn.
“I said to Angus, ‘Let’s get married in the hospital, I know it’s Covid and no one can come, but I want to marry our baby because we don’t know if he’ll be with us, we just don’t do it.’ “I don’t know what’s coming,” she said. Alana to FEMAIL.
Alana Wilkinson, 33, and her husband Angus, 34, planned a very intimate bedside ceremony for their son Rafferty as they were unsure whether their firstborn would survive.
Alana went into labor and gave birth to Rafferty at 24 weeks. She weighed only 704 grams. Fortunately, she pulled through and lives happily with her parents in northern New South Wales.
Fortunately, after more than three months in the Neonatal Critical Care Unit, Rafferty recovered and was able to return to Alana and Angus’ home in the northern rivers region of New South Wales.
Desperate measures for a hospital wedding
On November 14, in the midst of the Covid pandemic, a rare ceremony was held at the Neonatal Critical Care Unit of the Mater Hospital.
Hospital staff were willing to do everything they could to allow Angus and Alana to marry Rafferty, who was then three weeks old.
Just days earlier, Alana had begun planning her unorthodox wedding ceremony and had found a celebrant to participate.
One of Rafferty’s nurses, Amanda, was a photographer and a job was scheduled so she could care for the little baby and take pictures while the parents were getting married.
“Amanda put him in a little suit so he could be best boy, and Mater noted in his medical records that on November 14 he was best boy at Mom and Dad’s wedding,” Alana said.
“We couldn’t have a big family or crowd, but that suits us perfectly outside of all the NCCU chaos.”
Rafferty had been in critical care since he was born on October 25 and had had a shift that left medical staff and his parents unsure if he would make it.
‘Raff did very well for the first ten days, things were going pretty well and I thought, ‘Our son is going to be very good here,’ Alana recalled.
Despite restrictions on visitors, hospital staff were willing to do everything they could to allow Angus and Alana to marry Rafferty, who was then three weeks old.
“Then he started to wobble, he was having problems and his lungs needed more help, and that’s when I felt it was really important to surround him with as much love as possible.”
Weeks earlier, the parents had moved to the Northern Rivers from Melbourne to start their new life before the birth of their child and were staying with friends while they looked for a home.
They thought they had plenty of time to recover before Rafferty arrived until one day, Alana, then only six months pregnant, began to feel strange pain.
“I took them at night and during the day they stopped taking them. I didn’t realize they were contractions, I had never been in labor before,” she said.
After almost 24 hours the pain was getting worse so Angus insisted they go to hospital and they drove 50 minutes in the pouring rain to Lismore.
When they arrived, Alana’s contractions were just three minutes apart, but she didn’t realize she was in preterm labor until a doctor sat her down.
“She said, ‘You’ll be flown to Brisbane and you’ll stay in hospital with your baby, regardless of when it’s born, until the due date,'” Alana recalled.
“It was really overwhelming and quite jarring.”
“He had some oxygen problems, a lot of bradycardia, heart rate drops and a couple of blood transfusions. At that age it’s pretty complicated,” Alana said.
The staff managed to delay the birth for a few days while the mother was transferred to the Mater Hospital.
Rafferty was determined to come into the world and was born naturally weighing a tiny 704 grams.
“I saw him a few hours later. He was tiny. It was really amazing to see such a small person. He was a little bit bigger than a butter jar,” Alana said.
He was taken directly to the NCCU, where he was put on a ventilator and closely monitored.
Alana recovered well from the birth and was quickly discharged from hospital, but she and Angus returned every day to be at Rafferty’s side.
“He had some oxygen problems, a lot of bradycardia, heart rate drops and a couple of blood transfusions. At that age it’s pretty complicated,” Alana said.
The goal of his care was to get him to breathe on his own and ensure that he grew and developed at a good pace.
But there were times when parents weren’t sure if their baby would make it.
The focus of Rafferty’s care was to get him breathing on his own and make sure he was developing, but there were times when I wasn’t sure he would survive.
“A couple of times we came in in the morning and the nurse would say, ‘Raff’s had a really rough night,'” Alana said.
‘We looked at him and he was pale and white and looked like a doll. “It was really confronting to see how it seemed like a baby couldn’t survive.”
The struggling mother said she coped by refusing to bottle up her emotions.
“One of the biggest challenges was putting him down at night because of the magic of mom and baby, there’s a primal pain in the body that says, ‘Hey, your baby’s not here,'” she said.
‘I made sure that when I needed to cry I just howled. I didn’t leave anything on hold, I was very aware that I was going through a really challenging time and the last thing I wanted to do was make it harder for myself by not feeling it.’
A unique way she would process her grief and connect with Rafferty was through songs using her musical talents.
‘A friend of mine left me a small ukulele at the hospital. “She would take Raff out of his damp crib and place him on my chest, press the ukulele against his little bottom and sing songs,” she said.
He wrote songs about the oxygen traveling through his body and even his hemoglobin levels. Alana said that she still plays the hemoglobin song at her shows.
A unique way Alana would process her grief and connect with Rafferty was through her music. She wrote songs while she supported him at NCCU.
Alana said music had a profound effect on Rafferty’s health.
“It was incredible to arrive in the morning after having spent a very hard night with a lot of bradycardia and difficulties with oxygen,” he said.
‘Then when I put him on my chest and sang songs with him, you saw how that stabilized him. The nurses were like ‘Wow, look!’ and we would all watch it together.’
After 92 days, two weeks before her initial due date, Rafferty was stable enough to return with her parents to the Brisbane home they had rented so they could be close to the Mater Hospital.
‘I cried all the time; ugly and happy face crying. “It was amazing,” the mother said of finally having her baby girl home.
However, he needed to stay on an oxygen tank for 12 months after leaving NCCU as his lungs were not ready to function on their own.
“Going through those first few months was really challenging because you can’t go more than five or 10 minutes without oxygen,” Alana said.
“There were a couple of times where the oxygen tube would have been removed and it got really scary.”
The parents were relieved when Rafferty was able to run off his oxygen tank in January 2023 and was able to begin life without any health problems.
After 92 days, two weeks before her initial due date, Rafferty was stable enough to return home to her parents. Alana describes it as a ‘firecracker’ that fills the energy
‘I cried again ugly and happy. It felt like the end of an era. Once he got rid of the tanks, a real freedom opened up to him,” Alana said.
She describes Rafferty as a “firecracker” full of energy.
‘That’s the thing about premature babies: they’re ambitious. “His beginning in life, his little human model, is imprinted with enthusiasm and a fight to survive,” he stated.
Alana released the first song she wrote for Rafferty at NCCU, Dream Big, which is available on Spotify.
“It’s a little love song for him to notice all the beautiful things we can do now,” she said.
“It was really connecting with him in those moments in the window seat and letting him know that there was a whole world out there waiting for him.”