The 22oz miracle
This is baby Francesca. If she’d been born just two days earlier, it would have been legal for doctors to terminate her or let her die
BORN with feet barely bigger than a penny, Francesca Bradley-Curran was given almost no chance of survival.
She arrived just two days after the 24week abortion limit, weighing only 1lb 6oz and unable to breathe for herself. Her skin was still translucent, her eyes hadn’t opened and she had no eyebrows or lashes.
Nurses were so convinced she wouldn’t make it that they created keepsakes of her tiny hand and footprints for her parents, Victoria Bradley and Paul Curran.
But astonishingly, despite a collapsed lung, meningitis, blood poisoning, sepsis and a host of other life-threatening problems in the early weeks of her life, she survived.
Francesca has had 15 blood transfusions and laser surgery to save her sight, but is now a bonny nine-month-old with no apparent health problems.
Last night Miss Bradley, 37, of Liverpool, said it made her ‘feel sick’ to think that her daughter might not be here now had she been born only a couple of days earlier.
Babies born before the 24-week limit are considered to be ‘on the threshold of viability’ and it is down to a doctor’s discretion whether to intervene. Often nature is left to take its course and their mothers are classed as having miscarried if they die.
Miss Bradley said: ‘When Francesca was born it took doctors 11 minutes to get her breathing. If she had been born just two days earlier they wouldn’t have done anything to help her. She would have been classed as a miscarriage. It makes me feel sick to think that those two days made the difference.’
Miss Bradley, who works for a housing association, and her husband, a 46-year-old civil servant, were delighted when she became pregnant in August 2015.
But on April 22 last year she began experiencing back and stomach pains. She was taken to Liverpool Women’s Hospital, where doctors revealed she was in labour. Francesca was born the following day. ‘They put her on a machine straight away,’ her mother said. ‘There were about 15 doctors and nurses all working on her. They were using a finger to bring her around because she was so small. It was torture, not knowing if she was going to survive.
‘When I was in labour I had to sign a document to say I wanted them to do everything they could to save her when she was born. I hadn’t realised that I wouldn’t have got that option just two days earlier.’
Francesca was born with infections in her blood and in the first week contracted sepsis and septicaemia. She later contracted meningitis, before developing sepsis again at three weeks. By week four, however, she was doing well and doctors tried to take her off the breathing ventilator she was using, but her lung collapsed.
She later suffered kidney problems but at 40 days old could be taken off the ventilator. At ten weeks she had laser eye surgery to correct a detached retina.
In August she was finally allowed home, but was kept on oxygen until December. She is currently free from any medication.
Miss Bradley said: ‘She was discharged from the hospital after 17 weeks – they said she was a miracle.’ She added that the 24-week abortion limit should be lowered to give more children like hers the chance of life.