Anyone any experience of Hypoxic-Ischemic Encephalopathy Grade 1?

[Thandeka]

My beautiful 9day old baby has this:

Anyhow she is a grade 1 of this which is the best one to be and is alert and feeding and doing all normal baby stuff sucking and grasping reflexes etc. (and she is lovely!)

She had an MRI scan yday which did show evidence of an "event" during her birth (ie. damage) but at this stage they can't tell how the damage will manifest itself. We have a follow up appt. in 6 weeks but it is a case of see how she develops.....

Anyone else had this?

(Basically she was a 9 and a half pounder (I had a tiny bump- we had no idea!) and I physically couldnt push her out ended in failed ventouse, forceps delivery, episiostomy, 2nd degree tear. Oh and my first epidural failed- 2nd worked, and they couldnt get a line in blood everywhere, vomit gas and air didnt work- I basically had everyones nightmare birth and to make it worse it possibly damaged my baby and she also sustained a lung infection during delivery and was on antibiotics through a canula and in neonatal intensive care for 5days after birth.

Anyhow anyone else had a baby with similar and it all been okay? She seems like a lovely normal baby to me- cries, wees, poos, feeds, and I adore her and just want her to be okay.

Thanks

My youngest was born at 32 weeks and very unwell. He, according to scans, had wiped out a good third of his brain with IVHs. At six months old he appeared to be deaf and possibly blind. A scan showed extensive brain damage. DH and I decided not to follow up; we took the approach that if he had a problem we would deal with it as the need arose.

He is now 11, G and T'd in Math, Science and Art and should get straight 5s in SATs. If he still has potions of his brain out of order he must have been a bloody genius before!

He is just about to have some follow up scans, not due to problems but as part of research exploring how some young babies brains adapt.

I hope you are as lucky and wanted to reinforce the difficulties in foreseeing the effects of brain damage. It would be stupid to say don't worry but try not to let it affect your lives too much at this stage. You can't plan so just enjoy each day, each gift, as it comes.

Hi there, only just found this thread whilst doing some reading, hoping its still on your radar's as it would be great to have some support.

DS2 was born in October last year and suffered an HIE, not sure if Grade 1 or 2. He's doing really well, hitting all milestones so far and is a bright and happy little boy (just turned 9 months).

This is the first time I've really done much reading, I'm not sure why I haven't before now, not very like me to be honest, guess just enjoying my time with him (he is such a happy and nosy sociable baby).

I didn't know that there was a possibility of problems developing even if they have a good start - can anyone point me in the direction of more information that I can access online? I keep finding highly medicalised texts that I can get the gist of, but I don't really understand.

Also, from what I've read, it seems to be saying that its caused by not getting baby out quick enough, which I wasn't aware of at all.

I was 42 weeks and going through an induction, after about 48 hours his heart showed signs of weakening so we went straight to emergency section. He came out screaming and scored well on agpars but then he stopped breathing when he was about 10 minutes old, he was being held by DH at this point and we don't know at what point he stopped breathing - so don't know how long he was deprived of oxygen for.

Hope all your LO's are keeping you smiling.

Hi LaTourEiffel- not sure if you'll see this or not, but if you haven't already found it I recommend visiting the Facebook Newborn Brain Cooling page to see a lot of very positive HIE stories, and there's also the Yahoo HIE Support Centre.

Hope your LO is still doing well- mine was very lucky to escape any effects after suffering HIE grade III, and is now 100% on track with her development at 21 months of age.

HIE is caused by lack of oxygen- in our case, not because it took too long to get her out; just because she was tangled in the umbilical cord. Older kids who fall into swimming pools or choke can also suffer HIE.

I started this thread and just wanted to post an update 20months later because someone found my blog from googling "Grade 1 HIE outcome" and when I just googled this this thread was 4th post (which was mine) so I wrote this to help people looking for info:
childbirthptsdandme.wordpress.com/2011/10/10/hie-grade-1-newborn-outcome/