KENT, UK, August 14, 2013 (LifeSiteNews) – A British couple is celebrating the homecoming of their four-month-old daughter, Daisy, after the baby girl was born in April at just 23 weeks gestation and weighing only 1.1 pounds.
Kim Cruickshanks, 32, told the UK’s Daily Mail that she had always wanted to be a mother, but after her polycystic ovaries caused her to miscarry six times in fourteen years, she started to lose hope of it ever coming to pass.
When she became pregnant with Daisy, she waited on pins and needles until she passed the three month mark before allowing herself to buy any baby things. But then, at just 23 weeks pregnant, she went into labor – 16 weeks early.
Only 9% of babies born that early in Britain survive, according to the National Health Service, and most of them suffer from long-term health problems. Whether or not such babies should be given lifesaving care is a matter of some debate in the country, which has had some trouble allocating the limited resources of its socialized health care system between its 62 million citizens – and where abortion is legal until 24 weeks gestation. A 2011 BBC2 documentary called “23 Week Babies: The Price of Life” examined the issue, asking openly whether it might not be better to adopt the policy of The Netherlands, which bars babies under 24 weeks from being admitted to the NICU, preferring them to “die with dignity.”
‘We were told it was highly unlikely she would make it,” Cruickshanks told the Daily Mail. “They said when she was born she might breathe a little bit but that might be it. I thought we were going to lose her – we had a bit of hope but were prepared for the worst.”
Click “like” if you are PRO-LIFE!
Facing such a starkly negative outlook, Kim told the Daily Mail that at first, she was afraid to even look at her daughter when she was born.
But then her husband, Anthony Slaughter, 32, told her, “Look, she’s moving.”
Daisy’s doctors got her breathing through a tube, but that was only the beginning of the little girl’s harrowing fight for life. She suffered from low blood pressure, respiratory distress syndrome, acute renal failure, jaundice, feeding problems, hyperglycemia and metabolic bone disease. For the first eighteen days of her life, she was too fragile for her parents to hold. She spent three months in intensive care.
But on August 1, she was finally allowed to go home, having attained a weight of 4.8 pounds. While the little girl’s condition will require careful monitoring over the next couple of years, her doctors say they believe she will catch up to her peers by the time she is five.
“‘It feels like it’s a miracle – I can’t believe I waited so long have a baby. I didn’t think it was going to happen,” Cruickshanks told the Daily Mail. “I still keep checking on her. I’m forever looking over at her.”