For those reading who are already a mother and are expecting again, or for the first time mothers to be, of course you should trust your doctors and follow their instruction, but don't be afraid to speak up if something doesn't feel right to you. The doctors in this story handed a mother her "dead baby" and told her to say her goodbyes, but she felt the need to hold onto him, to talk to him, to bring him close to her chest and love him. When he started to show signs of life the doctors dismissed his movements as reflexes, but she continued to touch him, and even offer him her breast milk. Clearly, she felt the need to do more than simply say goodbye and it paid off!
"'The doctor asked me had we chosen a name for our son,' said Mrs Ogg. 'I said, "Jamie", and he turned around with my son already wrapped up and said, "We've lost Jamie, he didn't make it, sorry." It was the worse feeling I've ever felt. I unwrapped Jamie from his blanket. He was very limp. I took my gown off and arranged him on my chest with his head over my arm and just held him. He wasn't moving at all and we just started talking to him. We told him what his name was and that he had a sister. We told him the things we wanted to do with him throughout his life. Jamie occasionally gasped for air, which doctors said was a reflex action. But then I felt him move as if he were startled, then he started gasping more and more regularly. I gave Jamie some breast milk on my finger, he took it and started regular breathing.'"
The article goes on to say, "In most cases, babies are rushed off to intensive care if there is a serious problem during the birth. But the 'kangaroo care' technique, named after the way kangaroos hold their young in a pouch next to their bodies, allows the mother to act as a human incubator to keep babies warm, stimulated and fed. Pre-term and low birth-weight babies treated with the skin-to-skin method have also been shown to have lower infection rates, less severe illness, improved sleep patterns and are at reduced risk of hypothermia."
When I first read this story I was most curious not about HOW the baby came back to life, but WHY the mother chose to hold her lifeless baby for hours after he was declared dead. We've all heard how babies in orphanages can die from not enough human contact, so it didn't really surprise me that the human touch could sustain life or perhaps even bring a dead baby back to life. Babies thrive from the human touch - that much has been scientifically proven and documented. However, science can't explain how this Australian mother brought her baby back to life, but there are many things science simply can't define or replace - a mother's love, her voice, the sound of her heart, her warmth, smell, including her breast milk. The perfect level of heat radiating from a light bulb with a preheated blanket can't compare to the warmth of mommy's chest. There are some things that we humans can offer our babies that no machine or factory produced item can replace. Breast milk is just one other perfect example of how nature provides a mother with exactly what her baby needs.
I love this story and hope that it will inspire more doctors and hospitals to promote "kangaroo care" before rushing babies off to incubators. Baby Jamie is referred to as a miracle baby, and it was a miracle that he came back to life, but I think we need to give his mother a lot of the credit and acknowledge that without her intuition he probably wouldn't have made it.
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1306283/Miracle-premature-baby-declared-dead-doctors-revived-mothers-touch.html#ixzz1DYj7nWuL
Video:
http://today.msnbc.msn.com/id/38988444/
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