Miracle recovery of boy who died at birth
Published: April 10, 2006
Having already lost one twin in the womb, Coralie Garside was distraught to be told the second had died at birth.
Paramedics gave her the terrible news while delivering the boy in a car park.
On reaching hospital they informed doctors that Isaac was dead. But, incredibly, a consultant spotted signs of life in the moses basket the child had been left in in the corner of his mother’s room.
After being ‘dead’ for 40 minutes, Isaac was resuscitated and two years on he has developed into a healthy toddler.
“It just seems like a miracle that he’s with us now,” said his 29-year-old mother. “I can’t believe that we have him home with us after being told that I’d lost him at birth. Every time I look at him, I feel like the luckiest mother in the world.”
Her pregnancy started to go wrong at 22 weeks when the identical boys she was carrying were diagnosed with twin-to-twin transfusion syndrome, a condition that affects blood flow in the placenta.
“We were worried, but the doctors assured us it was only mild,” said Miss Garside.
“I was scanned again a week later, but then at 24 weeks, the doctors had some terrible news. One of the twins had died. We were just in complete shock. I was just devastated and couldn’t stop crying.
“We just had to pray that our baby was safe and we wouldn’t lose him too. It was terrible carrying his twin brother still too after he had died, knowing that I would never see or hold him alive.
“But we knew that he was helping to keep his brother alive. If doctors had tried to remove him, then it was likely that the remaining twin would die too.”
Miss Garside was given steroid injections to try to help the baby’s lungs develop ahead of what was expected to be a difficult birth.
In November 2003, at 25 weeks’ pregnant, she went into labour.
Half way to Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge with her mother, Miss Garside decided they would not make it and they stopped to call for help. Paramedics delivered the remaining twin, telling her the child was dead.
“I was devastated,’ said Miss Gar-side, who lives in Ely with her partner Nigel Casburn, a car parts salesman, and their daughter Georgia, five.
“I had already been told that one twin had died inside me, now I was being told that other twin had died too. It was too much to bear.
“They laid him on my chest and rushed me into hospital. When we arrived, they told doctors there that the baby had died.”
She was taken to a room where Zachary, the twin who had died a few weeks earlier, was delivered.
It was then that the consultant realised that Isaac was alive. Doctors warned, however, that if he was revived he would almost certainly have brain damage.
“I had to have him resuscitated,” said Miss Garside.
“I couldn’t make the decision whether he lived or died. He had as much right to life as anyone else.
“I was just in complete shock at this stage. I had thought both my babies were dead, and now one was alive.”
The next morning she was taken to the intensive care unit to see her son on a ventilator.
“He just looked so beautiful lying there and so tiny, just weighing 1lb 9oz,” she said.
“I could only just pray that he would pull through.”
Isaac stayed in hospital for five months and had laser surgery on his eyes to fix blood vessels that had not formed properly in the womb.
He was taken back into hospital after developing pneumonia last May but has otherwise thrived.
Miss Garside added: “He’s up to the average height and weight for his age, and he had his two-year check up in February which he sailed through, so he’s doing fantastically well. He really is our little miracle.”
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