Miracle birth that’s brought Christmas joy
Wise man saves baby ‘born’ into abdomen ... now the little angel’s in a stable condition
THERE were no shepherds or donkeys, and certainly no manger, but one mother i s celebrating a truly miraculous birth after a quick-thinking doctor saved a baby who seemed destined to die.
With rosy cheeks and a contented smile, little Sephina has no idea of the drama she caused.
Sephina was suddenly ejected into her mother Masina Frost’s abdominal cavity when the womb ruptured. She was only saved when Professor Andrew Shennan, of London’s St Thomas’ Hospital, ordered an emergency team into action and performed a high-stakes caesarean operation that lasted just 30 seconds. ‘Everything happened so quickly,’ says Masina, a former head of the director’s office at London’s Tate Museum.
‘ One minute Andy was giving me an injection and the next, I was on a trolley being raced down to the operating theatre.
‘It was incredibly scary but we just feel so enormously lucky we have our beautiful daughter.’
On Wednesday, a month to the day since her birth, Sephina was finally allowed back to the family home in West London. The couple’s joy is all the more poignant as Masina and husband Adam, a sustainable investor, have endured a rollercoaster of heartbreak in recent years.
The pair, both 43, met while studying at Harvard University. They struggled to start a family and discovered Masina had a congenital condition which meant her uterus was small and her fallopian tubes were not properly connected.
After four rounds of IVF, their daughter Amelia, now five, was born in February 2012.
But when Masina was seven months pregnant with their second chil d, s he experienced s harp stomach pains and was rushed to hospital in Switzerland, where they lived. Her uterus had ruptured and Theo was born by emergency C- section, but the crucial delay meant he was deprived of oxygen and suffered brain damage. Sadly, Theo died aged nine months.
A consultant told Masina she could have another child but it would be high risk.
When she reached the 31st week of her pregnancy, she began to feel uncomfortable and went to St Thomas’ for a check-up.
By good fortune, Prof Shennan – an expert in high-risk pregnancy and a leading light behind the premature birth charity Tommy’s – was on the ward and quickly realised it was a life-or-death situation. Alarmingly, the placenta was no longer receiving t he blood from the uterus which is required to keep oxygen flowing to the unborn child.
‘We really did only have seconds to deliver her,’ Prof Shennan said.
‘We knocked her out with a general anaesthetic and from my first incision to delivery, it was just 30 seconds, the fastest emergency C-section I have ever done.
‘If Masina hadn’t been with me at that moment, we would have lost Sephina.
‘This truly was a miracle.’
‘It was incredibly scary, but we feel so lucky’