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Miracle baby who defied odds after being born at 25 weeks celebrates first birthday

Express (Online) [London (UK)] 05 Jan 2015.

A COUPLE who claim they were pressured to abort their 'non-viable' unborn baby
son have celebrated his first birthday after proving doctors wrong.

Jett Morris has just celebrated his first birthday

Little Jett Morris survived for five weeks in the womb after his mum's waters broke
when she was just 20 weeks pregnant.

He was born prematurely at 25 weeks weighing just 1.4lbs - less than a bag of sugar
- and has now grown into a healthy one year-old.

But parents Mhairi and Paul say Jett would not be here today if they had given in to
pressure from medics to end the pregnancy at East Surrey Hospital.

They claim staff gave them just five minutes to come to terms with a termination
and even wheeled in a trolley to take Mhairi to theatre.

She refused to go and then found herself facing repeated calls from nurses over the
next few days to have an abortion.

Jett Morris pictured just after he was born at Queen Alexandra Hospital, Portsmouth

But she refused and remained convinced her unborn baby was healthy and five
weeks later he was born.

Mhairi, 34, said: "They didn't see him as a child yet, they just called him a 'non-
viable foetus'. It was cold and I was devastated.

"I was in the early pregnancy unit and no-one from paediatrics came to talk to me
about my other options.

"But I'd just had a 20 week scan and everything was perfect and finding out it was a
boy made it very hard to accept a termination.

"The doctor said 'we're going to get you into theatre. You have to have a
termination because there's nothing we can do'."

She added: "I understand doctors have to tell you the worst case scenario and be
blunt, but no two people on this Earth are exactly the same and doctors didn't even
give Jett a chance.
"When he came back in and Paul and I had talked we told him I wouldn't be going
into theatre and the doctor looked at his watch and rolled his eyes at me, as if I was
wasting time.

"I said to Paul 'we have to get out of here'."

Mhairi suffered preterm premature rupture of membranes - where the waters break
before the pregnancy reaches full term.

She was later diagnosed with placenta praevia - where the placenta forms
underneath the baby and can cause bleeding and infection.

Mhairi Morris enjoying her first cuddle with her son

She was told she was likely to go into labour within 48 hours and the baby would die
- but days later she still hadn't given birth and was allowed to go home.

Mhairi returned home to Crawley, West Sussex with Paul, 36, but 12 days later she
started bleeding and was rushed to hospital.

The local Trust was only equipped to deal with children born after 28 weeks and the
couple had to travel 80 miles to Portsmouth Hospital.

Doctors there warned their son could be brain damaged and would probably die at
birth because his lungs would not be developed.

But Jett defied the odds and came out kicking and wriggling on December 6, 2013 -
and even let out a small "squeak" before being rushed to an incubator.

He suffered with chronic lung disease and jaundice - which he quickly recovered
from after his lungs and organs developed.

With his parents Mhairi and Paul Morris

He was finally allowed home on March 5 - almost three weeks before his original
due date of March 24.

Though Jett has two small holes in his heart it is not thought they will ever cause a
problem for him and he was taken off an oxygen machine in May.

Mhairi, who runs a children's boutique with Paul, added: "We have a happy outcome
but I worry that other mothers could have had an abortion when their babies might
have survived.

"I was given such a bleak outlook that I kept thinking 'he's not supposed to be
healthy' and was waiting for something to happen, but it never did."
Mhairi said she was forced to Google her options rather than being given them by
medics - and now hopes her story will be seen by other pregnant women doing the
same thing.

Surrey and Sussex Healthcare NHS Trust's Chief Executive Michael Wilson said they
were working with Mhairi to resolve her concerns about her treatment.

Little Jett just before his first birthday

He said: "From June 2013, while Mhairi was with us, it's our opinion that she
received high quality clinical care and was provided with information about the
range of options available to her in her circumstances, as well as having these
options discussed in detail.

"The team who cared for her pulled out all stops to keep both her and her child safe
throughout her high-risk pregnancy and following this, we transferred her to a more
specialist hospital so that she received the best possible care for her condition.

"We are delighted that over a year on, both mother and son are healthy and well.

"As a Trust, we strive to learn from all the feedback we receive from our patients to
continually improve our service.

" We have only very recently learned of her concerns as no complaints were raised
earlier - had they been, we would gotten in touch with her directly and looked into
what had taken place.

"We are now working closely with her and her family to understand what happened
in detail."

Copyright Express Newspapers PLC Jan 5, 2015

Reaction

Newborn infants with gestational age 37 weeks or less at birth is called

premature babies. Premature babies are not fully equipped to deal with life in our
world. Their little bodies still have underdeveloped parts that include the lungs,
digestive system, immune system and skin. Thankfully, medical technology has
made it possible for preemies to survive the first few days, weeks or months of life
until they are strong enough to make it on their own. In relation to my chosen
article, it can be considered a rare case having a pretermed infant to be born at 25
weeks and live. I would really consider it a miracle one considering that it has a lot
of underdeveloped parts that are necessary for an infant to survive. I have seen
few babies in an incubator and I was thinking if they feel the same environment
while they are inside their mothers womb. Having a good and better technology
in medicine as well as good and well-trained nurses nowadays, handling preemies
is no longer a problem. As nurses, we collaborate with the doctors in order for the
infant to survive through strict monitoring by providing continued oxygen
administration to allow them to effectively maintain respirations, provide
intravenous fluid administration to maintain fluid requirements, provide a gavage
feeding to meet its nutritional requirements and to strengthen the sucking reflex,
andmaintain a clean linen and equipment to reduce the chances of infections.