Baby born dead at five months, eight minutes later doctors are shocked by miracle.
For most couples, there isn’t a greater joy than learning that they would be parents soon. Some couples struggle for years before they are able to conceive, so news of pregnancy is the best thing that can happen to most couples. However, while conceiving in itself is often quite a challenge, the nine months of the baby’s growth inside the womb is the most challenging. While some women and babies sail through the process, some do not.
Bex and her husband Martin, like any other couple, were excited about the prospect of having a baby in their arms at the end of nine months. They soon found out that they would have a daughter, and they couldn’t have been happier. They made all their preparations, made their house ready for the arrival of their bundle of joy. Friends and family were excited too, since the pregnancy was going well.
They were therefore completely shocked when they went for the usual checkup one day. They went for their routine checkup where the doctor gave them news that shocked them: there was some issue with the baby’s heart, and they needed to deliver the baby immediately for the small chance of the baby’s survival.
Bex was only five months pregnant at that time. The chances of the baby’s survival seemed slim, but if they did not treat the baby, then the baby would definitely not survive. No parents should have to go through what Bex and Martin felt at that moment when they had to make the decision. Their happy bubble burst in that moment, but the decision—tough as it may have been—needed to be taken.
Bex and Martin wanted to clutch onto the smallest chances of their baby’s survival, so they took the tough call of having the baby brought into the world four months before her due date. The mental weight of preparing for the worst while hoping for the best must have taken a toll on the two, but they were not willing to give up easily. They wanted to do whatever they could to save their daughter’s life.
Bex underwent an emergency Caesarean at five months of her pregnancy. As if the trauma of having the baby so early on wasn’t enough, their worst nightmare seemed to have come true: as soon as the baby was taken out of the womb, her heart stopped.
Bex knew something was wrong when she didn’t hear the baby cry. She was born dead.
Bex broke down when she heard the harsh truth. It looked like they couldn’t even work with that small chance of her survival. Thankfully, there was a miracle in store for this couple. While Bex was still in shock over what had happened, the team of doctors refused to give up so easily.
What happened next was nothing short of a miracle. The doctors used electroshock treatment in the hope that Willow, Bex’s daughter, would be able to be revived. The chances seemed next to nothing since the baby was a preemie, which already made her odds low; additionally, she had a heart condition. Did anyone really think she would come to life?
Yet the doctors wanted to try until nothing else could be done, and their persistence paid off. Bex couldn’t believe it when she heard that her daughter’s heart had started to beat. She was alive.
However, it was still far from over, but Bex and Martin allowed themselves to hope once again. Willow seemed to be a fighter. Once her heartbeat was stabilized, the doctors treated her condition and placed her in an incubator.
The treatment—which could well have been taken straight from the pages of science fiction—involved lowering her body temperature to 91.4 degrees Fahrenheit. This procedure is called brain hypothermia, also known as targeted temperature management. In this procedure, the body temperature is reduced significantly using cooling blankets or ice packs. This is done to maintain a lower body temperature until the body is healed properly after blood flow to the brain has stopped.
This method is usually used when the brain does not receive proper blood flow due to a cardiac event. They used this method on Willow because her heart didn’t beat when she came out of the womb, and it took them eight minutes to get her heart to beat again. This is a long time for a brain to go without blood flow. The procedure reduces the chances of tissue injury due to lack of oxygen and perfusion, ensuring there was no permanent brain damage from those eight long minutes.
Willow stayed in the incubator under brain hypothermia for four days. Bex and Martin didn’t leave her side, even though they weren’t allowed to hold her hand. But they weren’t going to give up now. They stayed by her side the entire time, hoping and praying that she would grow stronger.
After four days, when her temperature normalized, they took her out of the incubator. There was no brain damage, which came as an immense relief for the parents. Willow had pulled through; she would live after all.
For four weeks, Willow couldn’t cry, even when all Bex and Martin longed to hear was her voice. The intubation tubes had irritated her throat so severely that it took several weeks for her to recover from it.
Willow is now one and a half, and she is doing great—a perfectly healthy toddler. While the doctors did warn them that there was still a lingering risk of developmental issues, Willow to date has shown none. The advancement of medical technology and Willow’s fierce will to survive brought this miracle to pass, and hopefully, Willow will continue to grow into a healthy, strong girl.
