MEET MY ONE IN A BILLION BABY
One of Australia’s top obstetricians has never seen a luckier baby than little Brigid
Beautiful Brigid Midgley would not be alive today if it wasn’t for what doctors are calling a miracle birth after she and the placenta moved out of her mum’s womb and into her abdomen at 36 weeks.
“She was dying,” confirms John Newnham, who is a professor of obstetrics at the University of Western Australia.
“The baby and the placenta had delivered into the space that the bowel normally occupies. She was outside of the womb, and when a baby loses
‘We are so blessed... it was meant to be for our family’
connection to its mother it has about four minutes to survive.
“I’ve worked for 50 years in obstetrics, all over the world, and I’ve never heard of a baby being delivered through the back of the uterus, then the front, into the outside. She was pulled out by the only body part remaining in the uterus – her foot! The chances of this happening in the operating theatre are unimaginable. This is one blessed baby. We’ve all delivered plenty of dead babies like this, but I’ve never seen a luckier baby than Brigid.”
Nestled into mum Lizzie’s protective arms, it’s hard to believe just what a traumatic birth the 33-year-old and Brigid survived earlier this year when the baby arrived on May 7, weighing 3.3kg and measuring 48cm long at the King
Edward Memorial Hospital in WA.
“I woke up to really bad pains in my side,” recalls Lizzie. With contractions two minutes apart, she was raced to hospital, where tests confirmed that Brigid’s heart rate was 40 beats per minute – when it should have been 160 beats per minute. The chances of the baby surviving were slim to nothing.
“We are so blessed that this has gone safely,” smiles Lizzie.
She and husband Dwayne, 34, who also have eight-year-old son Callum, endured four unsuccessful pregnancies before Brigid’s harrowing arrival. “We feel absolutely lucky and it was meant to be for our family.”