It was around June 1997 that Natalie found out she was pregnant. I was thrilled when she gave me the news. We weren't married at that stage but had been living together for four years, engaged for two and dating for six. We thought this a perfect opportunity to get married. We both had good jobs, a comfortable place to live and felt that a baby would complete our lives. How young and naive we were. The two months leading up to the wedding were very stressful for us both. Natalie was permanently ill, the pressure at work was building up and it was a difficult time all round. Things settled down after the wedding but Natalie was still suffering from nausea and could keep nothing down. At 1pm on the 11th November, Natalie suffered PROM (premature rupture of the membranes). She was admitted into hospital and put on a drip but by the next afternoon, it was obvious that they could no longer delay the birth. Natalie had a very high temperature and her life was now in danger. We were both terribly nervous as she was just over 25 1/2 weeks pregnant and we knew that babies that age had very little chance of survival.

Tyler was born at 9:50pm on the 12 November 1997. He was tiny - weighed just over 1kg, beautifully formed but had no eyebrows, eyelashes or even cartilage in his ears. To our surprise, Tyler cried as soon as he was born. What a wonderful sound that was. He breathed on his own until he was intubated.(This is where a tube is inserted through the nose directly into the branch of the lungs to assist in breathing.) He would not have survived for long without the aid of a ventilator - babies this age rarely do. His long stay at the Flora Clinic NICU had begun.