15 Weeks Early & 8 Days Apart: The Trauma of a Micro-Preemie Birth

Sickboy

CBC

Society & Culture

4.8 • 524 Ratings

🗓️ 7 April 2026

⏱️ 81 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What happens when your body decides to Marie Kondo your entire large intestine, but the healthcare system treats your "vestibule" like an optional extra? This week we sit down with Emily. At 23, she went from a "healthy" young woman to shitting blood 20 times a day which eventually led to living life with a permanent Barbie butthole. But the real horror story isn't the Ulcerative Colitis diagnosis; it’s what happens when you try to navigate a high-risk pregnancy in a system that compartmentalizes your "gut" from your "baby" until the two collide in a traumatic, 25-week micro-preemie delivery.

Transcript

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0:00.0	It's been said that being neighbors with America is like sleeping with an elephant.
0:04.3	One gets affected by every twitch and grunt.
0:07.8	Well, these days, there's a lot more than twitches and grunts in dealing with the U.S.
0:13.5	I'm Paul Hunter.
0:14.6	And I'm Katie Simpson.
0:15.7	We're reporters here in Washington, and every Wednesday will bring you a smart conversation
0:20.3	to help you make sense of how
0:21.9	American politics are affecting Canada. Our new podcast is called Two Blocks from the White House. Find
0:27.9	and follow now wherever you get your podcasts, including YouTube. This is a CBC podcast.
0:43.3	Hello, everyone.
0:46.1	Welcome back to another episode of Sick Boy,
0:49.7	and this week we are hanging out with our new friend, Emily,
0:56.4	who may actually be a walking-talking Mattel product.
0:57.4	Why is that?
1:01.8	Well, it's because she has what one would call a Barbie butthole,
1:05.2	aka she doesn't have one.
1:09.7	But in all seriousness, Emily's journey is a wild one.
1:13.8	She lives with ulcerative colitis. And I know we just recently did an ulcer of colitis episode, but this is very, very different. Obviously, in Emily's case, things went south when it
1:23.7	comes to her UC and eventually led to her having her large colon removed.
1:29.2	And so she had to navigate life living with an ileostomy.
1:33.6	But to top that off, we also dive into her experience of a very high-stakes birth.
1:40.5	The terrifying reality of suffering from a bowel obstruction while 23 weeks pregnant
	...

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