Baby Charles is now 6 months old. That's his real age. In terms of his developmental, or corrected, age, he's just under 5 months old. It's complicated trying to calculate and explain that, every time someone asks - such as the nurses at the local health centre, who need to know the specifics in order to work out whether he is meeting his developmental milestones.

On 11th April, little Charles came home.

It's late March 2010 and baby Charles is in an isolette (dubbed The Glass Box) in the hospital's Special Care Nursery, where premature babies are cared for.

At 35 weeks, he is one of the oldest babies there. However, due to my inter-uterine growth restriction issue (see earlier blog), he is also the smallest baby there by far. He is breathing unassisted and is relatively well developed, but, at 1.4kg, he is SO tiny. Other babies there are much bigger in size than Charles, but as they were delivered at lower gestation ages, they have other problems such as undeveloped lungs.

Special Care is staffed by cheerful and welcoming women who care for the mothers almost as much as the babies. I spend my remaining time in hospital, while recovering from my caesarian, creeping into Special Care at all hours of the day and night, to sit by my baby.

Generally I sit there and cry.

He is too small to suck and so he is fed Nan formula via a tube through his nose. This causes problems with my milk production - despite the best efforts of lactation consultants, his prematurity and the lack of a sucking baby (plus, possibly, the medication I am on) means I don't manage to produce any milk for him.

I weep still more, and feel like a complete failure.

I put my hand into the glass box and stroke his head. I talk to him - and he appears to react to my voice. I watch over him and the nurses watch over me.

He is treated for jaundice and wears tiny little sunglasses. Once each day he is brought out for a kangaroo cuddle, which involves him being put down inside my t-shirt. When he cries, he sounds so weak and tiny. I cry too. Constantly.

But he is a fighter.

I leave hospital and commence the daily visits in to see him. I am so freaked out at first, upon returning to the real world, that I jump at loud noises. I continue to cry at the drop of a hat. Quite traumatised, I realise later.

After about a week, I stop crying. After two weeks Charles starts to rapidly put on weight, and the nurses encourage him to suck a dummy, in preparation for life after the feeding tube.

Eventually he is fed for the first time from a tiny bottle. The look of astonishment on his face is priceless, and I laugh for the first time in weeks.

The weeks pass. As I continue my daily visits (I'm proud of the fact that I never missed a single day) he leaves the isolette and moves to a proper cot. He is fed more and more milk by bottle and eventually his tube comes out altogether. He puts on more and more weight.

The cardiologist scans him and is pleased with his heart - apparently he has two holes, but they are tiny and he is hopeful they'll both close over as baby grows. He is in no immediate danger. A small light appears at the end of the tunnel.

The peadiatrician is also very pleased with him. "He's punching above his weight", she continually tells me. Eventually, at 1.9kg, with his appetite increasing by the day, he is allowed to come home.

My motherhood journey begins in earnest.

So here's the story of my baby's birth. I haven't been able to write it until now, two weeks later, and I'm probably still processing it.

We sat up all night - I in a birth bed in a birth room at my hospital, my partner in the fold-out chair beside me. Nurses took my blood pressure at regular intervals. Despite medication, it kept getting too high. My severe pre-eclampsia was not getting any better.

In the morning at 8am, my obstetrician came and reviewed the results. "Look," she said, taking my hand. "We have to deliver this baby now".

The c-section was scheduled for 11.30am. I was panicked and terrified. The anaesthetist came to see me and I told him to give me something to relax me. Perhaps a mistake, in hindsight - but I was truly frightened. I knew baby would be very small, because we'd been monitoring his growth and he was well behind what he should be. I also knew about his health issues (see earlier blogs). I didn't know what state he'd be in and I didn't know how I'd handle things.

The caesarian, though, was fairly quick and routine. I don't remember feeling anything. I was there, they numbed me, they did their stuff, then I heard the baby cry - thin little cries. A wrapped baby in a blue hat was put in front of me to see, then he was whisked away. People took photos. My partner looked startled and a bit like a deer in the headlights. I was just kind of lying there.

I don't remember what else happened that afternoon. I think I may have been taken to see the baby, who was in the special care nursery in an insolette, but I don't really remember. My partner and my mother tell me I said all sorts of silly things and then slept. I was drugged out of my mind, I guess.

I do remember forgetting at one point that I'd had the baby.

The next morning I was shaky and couldn't get my brain into gear. I remember someone asked me to sign something and I couldn't use the pen. I was taken again to see the baby and this time I remember more - I was frightened by how small he was. But my head was thumping and I couldn't stay long.

It wasn't until that evening that I got myself together and started visiting the nursery and asking questions about my little Charles Alexander Peregrine.

I remember while I was there one of the nurses said "Oh, your poor feet", and I looked down and became aware, for the first time, that my legs and feet were swollen to about three times their normal size - the joys of post-birth oedema. This would make it difficult for me to get about the hospital for the remainder of my stay.

I cried and cried, at the drop of a hat, for days afterwards. With hormones, and with emotion at becoming a mother, with distress at how small my baby was and how I felt I'd failed him at the last hurdle, with love for my baby. Often all three emotions at once. Sometimes I was a tiny bit upset when I saw other mothers in the hospital enjoying their healthy happy newborns, whilst mine was in his isolette being fed through a tube.

And that was my birth experience.

At 34 weeks I went for a routine obstetrician appointment.

My ob is a fairly calm person. Throughout my difficult pregnancy (baby's growth issues, problems with the heart, hypospadias) she has managed everything with aplomb.

Now, she took my blood pressure, which throughout my pregnancy had been consistently low, and reacted with mild shock. "What the..."

We took a break and went to look at the baby on the ultrasound machine. She checked my fluid levels and blood cord flow. I rested in the waiting room and had some water. Then we went back to check my blood pressure again.

Still extremely high.

My obstetrician thought for a bit. She then explained that I should go over the road to the hospital to have things checked further, and for monitoring.

I went as requested, phoning partner and mother to explain where I was and stopping to grab a magazine from the local newsagency. I was shown into a room. I didn't get changed and get into bed, as I figured I'd probably be there for an hour or two, maximum.

I didn't go home for two weeks.

Urine tests and blood pressure monitoring over the next week proved I was very ill with pre-eclampsia. My face and legs became swollen. My blood pressure shot up dangerously high, and drugs continually failed to keep it down adequately.

The only cure for pre-eclampsia is delivery of baby.