YB REAL LIFE82 | JULY & AUGUST 2019“WE CALL HER Smiley Kylie because
she is always smiling and makes us
laugh,” says Gillian Louw, with little
Kylie sitting on the table in front of
us drinking water from a glass with
Gillian’s help.
Although Kylie just turned two years
old, she has a long way to catch up with
her milestones, and she is tiny (she
weighs just over 7kg). “Babies usually
outgrow their clothes, but Kylie has
outworn hers,” Gillian says.
Gillian “spotted” throughout her
pregnancy, but her gynaecologist wasn’t
worried because she’d had slight bleeds
with three previous pregnancies.
But then one Saturday when she
was about 29 weeks, she started
bleeding heavily.
“I’d been baking with my now seven-
year-old son, Tyron, and noticed that
I was bleeding. My husband, Sean, and
daughter Arabella [then three] were
out. I had a bath but when I stepped
out, the blood just poured! I held the
towel between my legs, and it was soon
drenched with blood. It was really
scary,” she says. She was admitted to
hospital for observation – and went
home once the bleeding stopped.
Baby Kylie was born by emergencyc-section at 31 weeks.
Gillian had an anti-
partum haemorrhage
caused by placenta
abruptio (this is when
the placenta comes
away from the wall of the womb).
Because she’d lost so much blood, she
needed
a transfusion with platelets.
Feeling sore and weak, Gillian was
determined to visit and breastfeed her
baby girl in ICU. “She was so tiny,”
remembers Gillian. “Her birth weight,
1 560g, was not bad, and with an Apgar
score of 5, then 7, she was coping. Her
leg was the size of Sean’s index finger,
and she was perfect in every way.”
Gillian was able to express milk for
Kylie’s feeds with the help of a breast
pump. “The nurses in the unit were very
kind and helpful, and even when Kylie
was attached to tubes and wires, I was
able to cuddle her against my chest,”
Gillian recalls.
The next seven weeks were a blur
for Sean and Gill; they spent as much
time as they could with Kylie. This
meant commuting back and forth to the
hospital, working and looking after their
other children. “My eldest daughter,Michaela, had finished school and was
like an au pair. She was a great help
and became my second pair of hands. I
don’t know how I would have managed
without her,” Gillian says.WORST FEAR MATERIALISED
When the paediatrician gave Kylie a
clean bill of health, she came home. “We
were so relieved that she had by-passed
many of the preemie problems,” Gillian
says. “Or so we thought.
“About two months later, one of my
worst fears began to materialise.
I was worried about Kylie’s head – her
forehead began to bulge and her eyes
looked different. She was also very fussy
and cried a lot. Michaela was looking
after her during the day, while
I was at work. When Kylie eventually fell
asleep, she would sleep for a long time
and was often difficult to wake.”
Gillian took Kylie to the emergency
room. The doctor measured her headTiny little Kylie from Edenvale has hydrocephalus.
Her grandmother Burgie Ireland speaks to Gillian
Louw, Kylie’s mom written by her