Mum had 'never been so frightened' over pregnancy bleeding

"I've never been so frightened."

Lauren Farrelly was 31 weeks pregnant with her son Nico last year when she was told she had placenta accreta, a rare pregnancy complication that can cause life-threatening bleeding at the time of birth. Now she and a charity hope her story will show others that help is out there.

Farrelly did not have any problems with the pregnancy of her first child when she had a caesarean to give birth to Thea nearly three years earlier.

However, she had to undergo an eight-hour operation under general anaesthesia after giving birth to her son five weeks premature.

She was also not able to hold Nico until later that night.

This was after being diagnosed in Jersey, but then having to be taken to Southampton Hospital because there are not the facilities on-island to carry out such a procedure.

Farrelly said: "It was very traumatic because one day I was at work and everything was great, and then the next the next day we were packing our bags and we were moving to Southampton."

She stayed there for three weeks before going into surgery to give birth to Nico.

She said: "As soon as I was woken up from the surgery... I did get to meet him. He came down when I didn't even know he was coming, so I remember just crying".

Placenta accreta causes the placenta to become abnormally attached into the muscle of the uterus, making separation at the time of birth difficult.

The NHS said caesarean delivery was associated with an increased risk of placenta praevia in subsequent pregnancies.

While she and her partner, Dom Beckford, were in Southampton, they were supported by the charity Family First, which made a "really hard situation a bit more manageable", Farrelly said.

It paid for flights and accommodation for Thea to come and see them while they were off-island, as well as covering costs for other family members to visit them.

Farrelly said it was "an amazing charity" and "nothing was too much trouble for them".

She said: "They just wanted to make the experience as less stressful and bearable as possible. I don't know how we would have coped without them.

"There'll be so many more families in Jersey that need the support from this charity and people aren't aware that it even exists."

Family First CEO Cherly Dobel said she hoped Farrelly and Nico's story showed help was out there.

She said: "The whole point of Family First is to have somebody at the end of the phone for families who have a child that needs to go off island for medical treatment.

"A family support worker will introduce themselves, find out what exactly it is that they need, where are they going, what are they most worried about and then they pull together a plan of support with the family.

"We want more families to know about us because, on average, 250 families will go off-island a year and we support around 100 to 150, so there's more families that need our support."

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