Always remember I love you

FEARFUL MUM WRITES TO NEWBORN BABY

A y o u n g mum w h o became desperately ill after giving birth has told how she wrote letters to her newborn daughter and husband telling them how to go on if she did not pull through.

Now recovered and cuddling her daughter, Ashvine Ashok, 31, spoke of the terrible days after Ashika Evie was born prematurely last month.

Ashvine developed a dangerous complication of pregnancy where the placenta fails to deliver, leaving her at high risk of infection or bleeding to death. Doctors at the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital in Glasgow fought to keep her alive while they planned major surgery. Meanwhile, Ashika was rushed to the hospital’s special care baby unit after arriving six weeks early at 4lb 7oz and needed help feeding.

In a room, just off the operating theatre, Ashvine was being constantly monitored by nurses in case she started to haemorrhage. The young mum, a radiographer from Glasgow, said: “I was monitored constantly and a midwife checked my blood pressure and looked for any signs that I was deteriorating. Blood transfusions were on standby and I feared I was dying.”

Ashvine was g i ve n a constant infusion of antibiotics to prevent the danger of infection that can come with an incomplete birth. The operation to remove the placenta comes with significant risk to the mother’s life.

“I had worked with patients in theatres at Glasgow Royal Maternity – which adjoins the Princess Royal – now I was one of them,” she said.

Ashvine, fully recovered, kisses her baby daughter Ashika Evie, who was born six weeks early, and, below, with husband Ashok and baby Ashika at home in Glasgow her womb and allow her to go on to have more children if she wished. The s u rg e r y wa s a success and she has now recovered. “I put my trust in them and they saved me,” she said. And, since her ordeal early last month, Ashvine and Ashika have returned to their Glasgow home.

Placenta accreta is a rare but increasing serious complication of pregnancy when the placenta grows too deeply into the womb and refuses to be delivered in the normal way after the baby arrives. It affects up to three in 1,000 mums. But it almost always strikes those who have had previous babies delivered by caesarian section. However, the condition rarely affects first-time mums like Ashvine. “I want other mums to know that if they do develop this that there is hope and indeed l i f e, a f t e r w a rd s ,” she said. “I don’t know if I will have another child but I will always be grateful to the doctors and nurses who gave me a chance to see my beautiful daughter grow up.”