Miss Capewell, who has a five-year-old daughter Jodie, went into labour in October last year at 21 weeks and four days after suffering problems during her pregnancy.
She said she was told that because she had not reached 22 weeks, she was not allowed injections to try to stop the labour, or a steroid injection to help to strengthen her baby’s lungs.
Instead, doctors told her to treat the labour as a miscarriage, not a birth, and to expect her baby to be born with serious deformities or even to be still-born. She told how she begged one paediatrician, ‘You have got to help’, only for the man to respond: ‘No we don’t.’
_____________________
Tanya adds: A family member of mine went through the identical thing, only with twins. We mourn them to this day, and though the babies both breathed on their own for a couple of hours outside the womb, the hospital called it a miscarriage. I have a lot of words for what happened; ‘miscarriage’ isn’t one of them.
by 
But at least she got a free lunch.
I’m going with the doctors on this one: If the baby is almost certinly going to die with or without help, it’s pointless to cause further stress to the mother – at best, all it gives her is another week of hope. At worst, the baby by some miracle lives with severe brain damage. Best to just not intervene.
I tried to find some statistics on survival rates – it’s 20 to 35% at 23 weeks, according to wikipedia. No statistics on earlier than that that I could find.
Suricou, you didn’t read the piece very carefully. They refused to do anything to stop the labour, which is one thing that could have saved the baby.
And then there is that little word “almost” that you used. How would you like it if you had a condition for which the survival rate is only 10% with medical intervention (and zero without intervention), and the doctors told you “you are almost certainly going to die with or without help, therefore we are refusing to treat you”? That’s exactly the logic that you are using.
I know a little boy who was born at 22 weeks and a few days. He’s now in first grade, perfectly healthy, no brain damage. Certainly not all children born at that stage progress so well but their chances of surviving and thriving are improving all the time.
My own OB-GYN treated a pregnant woman whose water broke at 4 months. With drugs and other interventions they were able to keep the baby in for two more months. She is now a healthy toddler.
At this stage of pregnancy even a few more days in utero can make an enormous difference in the baby’s chances. I find it appalling that the doctors in this in this instance didn’t try to do more to help this woman and her child.
I’m still sideing with the doctors. They know what they are doing. I don’t. Unless you are a qualified ob-gyn, nor do you. Besides, this report is from the Daily Mail. The Daily Mail lies. Frequently. They love to get their readers angry or upset, because emotional readers buy more papers. I wouldn’t trust them not to have ommited some piece of medically vital information – perhaps a reason the labor couldn’t be delayed, or the risks doing so would have posed to the mother, or information suggesting the fetus to be severely damaged. I’m certinly not going to trust the woman on this – the one who has been through severe emotional trauma, has lost her baby, and who is now out searching for someone to blame. Even if she isn’t deliberatly distorting things, her memory cannot be considered reliable.
This is a simple matter of unreliable unreliable information rendering it impossible for me to judge the situation for myself, thus requiring I defer to those people who were both better informed on this particular case and better educated in the field: The doctors.
What is being strongly implied here is that the doctors made a moral decision, not a medical one. And in that realm, they are no more qualified to make a decision than we are.
As a premmie myself, I think it’s very sad that this should happen.
Even sadder is the fact that some people condone the doctor’s decision.
There are two other cases of babies surviving in the 21 week although they are both nearly 22 weeks.
Everyone deserves a chance.
Helene