Our battler’s fighting fit
Martial arts-loving Maisy, nine, born with no blood
A GIRL who fought to survive after being born with no blood is now fighting fit – and has set her sights on a career as a Jiu Jitsu instructor.
Maisy Vignes, nine, astounded doctors with a haemoglobin level of zero when she was delivered by emergency C-section in December 2009.
But the youngster, from Tramore in Co Waterford, made a miraculous recovery and is now “a regular little girl”.
Her mum Emma told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “She does Jiu Jitsu and mixed martial arts. She was born a fighter and is still a fighter.”
Maisy’s entire blood supply was absorbed by 35-year-old Emma during pregnancy in a case which baffled consultants at Waterford Regional Hospital.
Medics feared the tot, who was six weeks premature, would be left brain damaged after being starved of oxygen. But after two weeks in intensive care and three blood transfusions – the first delivered through the umbilical cord – she turned a corner and now has no ill effects.
Emma said: “She’s met all her milestones, she’s in third class and is doing well. She made her Communion last year and everything is as it should be.
“Thank God because when she was born they feared she might be brain damaged. But now she’s in medical journals and she thinks she’s famous.
“There was a baby
born in the UK with a haemoglobin level of five but Maisy was zero.
“When they tried to take a blood sample there was only serum.
“There are cases recorded of people surviving with a haemoglobin level of four but for anyone to survive after having no blood at all was unheard of.”
Emma said she went into hospital for a routine check-up at 34 weeks when doctors quickly detected a problem.
Recalling the birth, she said: “They monitored me for a couple of hours and knew straight away she wasn’t responding. She was born at 11.11pm. She was basically dead.
“She was completely porcelain, she was limp, she didn’t cry.
“We were told there was a very slight chance she would survive.
“They had never seen this before, never expected to be dealing with a baby born with no blood.
“At 3am my husband got down to have a peek at her in the incubator, there were tubes everywhere. But she came through it.”
Maisy’s fighting spirit has never left her and the pupil at Holy Cross National School in Tramore is fiercely protective of her four-year-old brother Ellis.
Despite the trauma of Maisy’s birth,
They had never seen this before and never expected to deal with a baby with no blood
EMMA VIGNES CO WATERFORD YESTERDAY
Emma and husband Mook wanted her to have a younger sibling.
Medics at Waterford Regional Hospital were on stand-by for his birth but he was born a week over his due date in a normal delivery.
Doctors have been unable to offer a full explanation for Maisy’s blood loss in the womb but Emma suspects it could be linked to the swine flu jab.
The vaccine was administered to the elderly, young children and pregnant women in 2009 and has since been linked to narcolepsy.
Emma explained: “A week and a half before she was born I received the
injection. I always thought it had something to do with it, because up to that point I had the perfect pregnancy.
“I always felt in my heart of hearts that that was the cause.
“Three days later I was in A&E and they had to give a steroid injection to help with her lungs.”
Maisy, however, remains unfazed about the medical emergency triggered by her birth.
And the youngster is busy dividing her time between her family, her friends and her love of animals.
Emma said: “She wants to be either a Jiu Jitsu coach or a zoologist when she
grows up.”
There was a baby born in the UK with a haemoglobin level of five. Maisy was zero
EMMA VIGNES WATERFORD