That is a beautiful story :)

Reply

how wonderfully amazing and how precious....and to think women are allowed to kill their unborn babies at this same time of pregnancy...so i ask a question of all so-called pro-choicers...when does life begin or is this still just a blob of tissue as you claim that it is?...just a thought

Reply

I'm so glad that mom did the right thing for her baby, and I am sure she keeps thinking the same thing too.

Reply

What an amazing thing to read. This is so great.

Reply

I felt that I just had to reply. This was a precious and wonderful story of the power of love and skin-to-skin contact on a newborn by it's mother.
However, no doctor or otherwise would perform and procedure to terminate a pregnancy at 24 weeks unless the baby/feotus was already passed away and had not misscarried or there was severe risk of death to the mother. Be informed if you want to destroy an otherwise beautiful story.

Reply

Gosh, this is wonderful, but I can't help wondering how many other babies have been thought "non viable" but actually could have survived had they been given the same chance. I hope this spurs changes in the procedures in births like this.

I agree with Lisa too.

Reply

I am adamantly pro-choice, so I'll step up to answer this one.

"Michael Gazzaniga, a member of the President's Council on
Bioethics...says that current neurology suggests that a fetus doesn't possess enough neural structure to harbor consciousness until about 26 weeks, when it first seems to react to pain. Before that, the fetal...EEG as flat and unorganized as that of someone brain-dead."
(source: http://www.slate.com/id/2120872/ )

Meanwhile, 60% of abortions occur before week 8, 88% by week 12. 1.4% are performed after the 21st week. So while abortions do occur this late in pregnancy, they are quite rare, and I suspect the vast majority of them are done in emergency circumstances. (source:
http://iier.isciii.es/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/ss5407a1.htm)

Reply

As the parent to a fetal-baby born at 25 weeks gestation, I can guarantee you, a baby does, indeed, react to pain earlier than 26 weeks. He could not react by crying out, because he had a ventilator tube down his throat and not enough lung capacity besides, he could not react by thrashing about, because he did not have the energy, muscle tone or stamina, and he was weighed down with numerous tubes and wires that weighed more than his 26 oz. But he most certainly had enough brain activity to react to pain.

Just wanted to clear up THAT misinformation, from someone who's been in the trenches.

Reply

This is a wonderful story, and I'm very happy for the family.

Can we not get into a spat about abortion? It just gets ugly so easily...

Reply

What a lovely story and pictures to go with it. :)

Reply

SKL,
You speak of *viability*, but what about quality of life? This story of a Mother's love regulating her baby's heartbeat and body temperature is a wonderful, miraculous, and touching one, indeed. I cried tears of joy for her while reading it, because I know what it is like to think your newborn, who shouldn't be born yet, is not going to make it, only to realize, he is. I also cried in sorrow for her, because I also know what it is like to not know what the future holds for a baby born too soon, too small.

My son got lucky. Even though he was born at 25 weeks gestation, weighing 26 oz and spent 3 mos in NICU, including a heart surgery at 11 days old. He is now 3, and has *escaped* with mild CP, which was diagnosed at age 2, he receives physical and occupational therapy, weekly, through the public school preschool special-ed program, which he attends 3 days a week, since he graduated from our state's birth to 3 Early Intervention Program. And, just recently, we have started facing the fact, and trying to get help for, Sensory Integration Disorder. Keep in mind, he is only 3, we may find more preemie-related issues as he gets older. This is not including all the issues he had upon release that have since resolved. We only got out this lucky, because he avoided a brain-bleed while in NICU. That would have made his issues 10-fold or more.

I know many preemies born several weeks later, with more severe problems. Some will never be able to live on their own, hold down a job, raise a family.

I'm not saying this family, or any family, should not have saved a baby this early. Heroic measures were not even used in the beginning, anyway. So, we don't know the conversations they had surrounding this very issue. I don't know what I would have done, had I known I was really only 25 weeks pregnant instead of the 27.4 I thought I was when they informed me they had to perform a c-section before the baby and I died. I start to cry just thinking of having to make that decision, especially considering my Mother is a NICU RN and she sees first-hand what these babies(fetuses) experience, and I know she would probably have tried to convince me toward comfort-care only. It would be hypocritical and presumptuous of me to try to tell any family what decision to make concerning the care and life of their child. But at least I have a platform on which to stand.

As far as I can tell, there was absolutely nothing wrong with the procedures in this birth. They did what the parents asked them to do. As long as they didn't try to stong-arm the parents into heroic measures they didn't want, or convince them to just let the baby die, when the parents wanted her saved at all costs, the correct procedures were followed.

Reply

Michelle, I see things quite differently. It seems to me that the docs decided this child was doomed to die, and therefore should not be given basic care such as being warmed and having human contact. The docs were obviously wrong and my guess is that this isn't the first or last time they have been wrong. The only difference was the mom's action. Most of the time patients just blindly follow what the docs say - if they say "doomed" the parents give up. We now have reason to believe this may have led to avoidable deaths.

It is not up to us to evaluate the quality of another person's life. There are many people who are not physically or mentally perfect, who nevertheless are glad to be alive. Americans have gotten used to the idea that if "I" wouldn't like to live that way, "nobody" would. This is horrible logic.

All I'm saying is that maybe docs should put the babies on the moms' chest even if they think they are "doomed." It seems a minor adjustment to potentially save a life. Most doctors I know would be happy to do this if they thought it had the least chance of saving a baby.

Reply

SKL,
The only reason this baby was put on her Mother's chest was because they felt she was not going to survive and apparently her parents did not request heroic measures, instead they requested this tiny moment to meet their child, have her blessed and let her go. If the doctors HAD been trying to save this baby, there would have been no time for family bonding at that moment. A team of NICU doctors, nurses and respiratory therapists would have whooshed in and begun work to stabilize the fetal-infant for transport to her new home for the next several months, the hospital NeoNatal Intensive Care Unit, where the parents would not be able to touch their child for weeks, let alone hold her. And if you come in contact with someone who came in contact with someone else who had a cold? You shouldn't even come in to gaze at your baby through the plexiglass of the isolette. The mother will be a perfect candidate for PPD because she will feel guilt over the circumstances surrounding her child's birth, guilt over leaving her child in someone else's care, sleep deprived because she has to pump every 2 hours round the clock to build her milk supply, even though the baby is getting a cocktail through a central line in her belly button, and the breast milk is going in the freezer. Then when she does finally get to hold her baby, she will feel overewhelmed, because her baby's saturation levels crash and the nurses swoop in and take over again.

The baby will spend weeks on a ventillator, which will cause a hydrocephalus, ROP, which will lead to blindness, CP, restriction to a wheelchair, etc. .. . The baby will get a staph infection, have surgery, have numerous setbacks, possibly come home with a monitor and an oxygen tank, where you will have to barricade yourself inside, and not let anyone in, for fear of an illness that would send your baby back to the hospital.

OK, so I kinda went off on a tangent there. My point is, there is no lovey, dovey baby on the chest moment when you have a micro-preemie sick fetal-baby born. There are medical professionals, medical equipment, intubation tubes, and isolette dust as your baby is rushed away from you. They only got the cuddle time out of respect for their wishes for their first and last moment with their daughter. For a change, I think the doctor's were doing the right thing.

I would never try to tell someone their life is not worth living, BUT we do need to be asking ourselves, and the doctors as they try to outdo each other by saving fetuses at earlier and earlier gestations, where is the line? Because the things they have to do to these babies in NICU to force them to survive, sometimes can seem more inhumane than just letting them go.

And ask a surviving preemie who suffers pain every day, who cannot hold a job, who has no control of their neurological system, or any of the vast *side-effects* that would be considered major and slightly more than life-altering, if they feel it is worth it. Some of their answers might suprise you!

Reply

Michelle, we are not understanding each other. Let me state it simply. When it looks like a baby is NOT going to survive, put it on the mom's chest and see if that helps. If not, no harm done. What is the problem with that?

Reply