Marie Gleeson

But making the decision as to what to do next, like from a maternal, you know, I find this hard, but like maternally, I was on the floor like I was

just gone, like I don't even remember an awful lot of those meetings.

But militarily, I'm trained to make decisions.

That's what you're paid.

You get in charge allowance on a ship to make really tough calls.

So I think that military skill set was me coming out, taking emotion out of it and making decisions.

And then we made the decision to go to term.

So then the maternal me had to pick myself up and we didn't tell an awful lot of people at all because we were trying to protect them.

But my decision and myself and John was that we would continue as strongly and as best as we could.

So every day for me was, you know, if he got stronger, if he grew because they'd given us such a bad diagnosis.

So when Ciarán was born, they had asked us to sign a DNR in the Coombe.

They had told us that he wouldn't cry.

So Sean Daly was the obstetrician who was with us in surgery in the emergency section.

And I remember, I remember that moment just before he was going to take Ciarán because he said something to me.

And he lifted Ciarán out and Ciarán roared the place down, like roared.

And I remember Sean Daly looking at me and just being like, this is a fighter.

So Ciarán was in Crumlin within three hours of being born and they had told us he would never get to Crumlin.

So John went away in the ambulance with him.

And like for me, that was massive in lots of respects.

But even that John got to have time with him because I'd had nearly 10 months.