Baby born at 16 weeks turned away

[burstingbug]

It's just been on the Wright Stuff

My feeling is that to 'try' to save an unsaveable miscarriage/pre-term baby would be cruel to the baby (ie cause pain for no good reason) and also, of course, cost the nhs money for no good reason.
I also find the idea of a extremely pre-term baby with a 1% chance of survival being kept barely alive with incredibly invasive treatments for months and months - maybe years - very sad.

I was talking about future survival rates and you don't know thats how it would be. I suppose you aren't happy with them treating them at 22 weeks either.

I think it is sad that there isn't somewhere other than A&E. I am haunted by the circumstances of my miscarriage - not the loss of the baby (or foetus if you prefer), but by the actual circumstances. Where I was. What was happening around me. Four years on and a beautiful dd later I have regular flashbacks to it.

I'm not saying there should have been medical intervention, but a quiet room somewhere and a nurse to talk things through...

It should be available.

I agree, I had to watch them put my baby into a yellow plastic sack and toss it into a bin. It shouldn't happen this way. Its very impersonal

My son who died at 21 weeks had a funeral and his body was treated with great respect by the hospital, the pathologist and the undertakers. Thanks to SANDS' campaigning work babies who die after the first trimester are treated far better now, as are their bereaved parents.
If he had not already died in the womb...it's a hard one. I think I'd have wanted everything reasonable done to save him, actually. It's a hard-wired instinct in parents, I reckon.
It must be the most heartbreaking of dilemmas. In an odd way I am glad we were spared either the agony of consenting to all sorts of procedures and treatment, or the agony of seeing him born alive with no realistic hope of his survival.

I agree A&E is not the place for a couple to have to deal with a miscarriage. Our local A&E deals with women who are less than 24 weeks. If a miscarriage is unpreventable then they offer the parents a quiet room togive them as much privacy as possible, spend time with their baby and offer as much support as they can (although in a busy A&E dept on a Sat night this is very difficult. No parent should have to witness the disposal of their baby into a clinical waste bag, that is awful.

I don't think that doctors want to end a child's life. Most of them go into medicine to save life and improve the well being of their patients.

Is it right to keep a child alive and in constant pain when there is no hope of any vaguely normal life. Surely is better to make the child as comfortable as possible and let nature take its course.

In Holland they have enthusia for extremely ill babies and adults. I don't think I agree with enthuasia, but I can see the arguements for it.

In the UK, the cut-off is still 24 weeks. Certainly in the unit I worked in (albeit briefly), if a baby was even 23+3, a woman would be told that there was not going to be an attempt to give treatment (even if born breathing). The only exception would be if the medical assessment of the baby indicated that there may be a dating error (i.e. baby larger than expected, skin less translucent than expected, etc).

It is a hard decision. I am personally pro-life, and would find it abhorrent if I was told my baby would be left to die. But, I knew lots of neonatal intensive care nurses, who I worked with, that said that if they went into labour at even 26 weeks, they wouldn't even go to the hospital. They see this all the time, and it is hard.

The difficulty is also that a baby can seem to have come out unscathed, but I cared for two babies in the same week that had been born at 26 weeks, and one was diagnosed profoundly deaf and completely blind, and the other deaf.

If the mum had been sent to the maternity unit, listening to the cries of everyone else's newborns would have been sheer torture.

There is a point where you have to let nature take its course and it is heartbreaking, believe me I know.

I do hope the mum was treated better than the article says.

There was a baby that was born at 19 weeks and survived.

If you google it, it will come up.
One of the pictures shows the baby laying next to a pen and they were the same size.

If there was even a scrap of room in the maternity wing, they should have taken her in there, if only so that she could feel like a mother for a few minutes (if that was her wish) as her baby died, rather than an accident. Her maternal instinct to try and protect her child might have been strong, even if the hope of survival was practically non-existent.