How a farewell cuddle revived a dying baby
A COUPLE who had been told by doctors that their baby had died during birth brought him back to life again after giving his body a farewell cuddle.
Kate and David Ogg were devastated when maternity ward staff informed them that one of their twins had stopped breathing after being born 14 weeks prematurely.
Told that he had just a few moments left with a beating heart, they gathered his warm body in their arms for a tender embrace. Kate ordered her husband to clamber into the bed and take off his shirt so that the infant could have extra warmth.
To their astonishment, the child suddenly began to move, his breath getting stronger rather than ebbing away.
Hospital staff then leapt into action and nursed him into a full recovery.
His remarkable tale of survival took place in 2010, but has only just been revealed by his parents, who live in Queensland, Australia. The boy, named Jamie, is now a healthy, bouncy five-year-old, whose siblings joke that he used to be dead but is now alive.
Maternity experts have hailed the case as an example of the effectiveness of the birth practice known as “skin to skin”, by which parents are encouraged to embrace their newborns to their unclothed chests as part of the bonding process.
The extra warmth generated by direct human contact is also said to be comforting for a child just removed from the womb.
Once recommended mainly for mothers, it is now advocated that fathers do the same.
Kate, who had tried to get pregnant for years without success, said that soon after Jamie was born, doctors had spent 20 minutes trying to revive him.
A doctor then sat on her bed and told her and her husband that there was nothing more they could do.
“I saw him [Jamie] gasp, but the doctor said it was no use,” she told Daily Mail Australia.
“I took Jamie off the doctor, asked everyone to leave. He was cold and I just wanted him to be warm. I just wanted to cuddle him. I unwrapped him and ordered my husband to take his shirt off and climb into the bed.
“I know it sounds stupid, but if he was still gasping there was still a sign of life, so I wasn’t going to give up easily.
“We were trying to entice him to stay. We explained his name and that he had a twin that he had to look out for and how hard we tried to have him. If we had let the doctor walk out of the room with him, Jamie would have been dead.”
The Ogg family have now set up an online charitable appeal to raise funds for the Miracle Babies Foundation, which supports premature and sick newborns. — ©