After another disturbed nights sleep (by this I mean awake from about 3am rather than not getting the 8 hours I’m used to!) Alfie proved that he has no excuses as far as hearing what mum and dad ask him to do after passing his hearing test! Alfie had a long day with an MRI scan and further brain monitoring. The MRI scan was an amazing thing… he was placed inside the tunnel wearing his ear muffs as we sat anxiously wearing ours. As the door closed the machine whirred into action, the noise soon became deafening to the point that Beth and I held our muffs even closer. The whole thing took 10 minutes, Alfie slept throughout.
We then left him back in SCBU for four hours. During this time we felt completely lost; having had him around for two days we were surprised how much we missed him! More surprising was that without Alfie around Beth was in a lot of pain, apparently brought on by feelings of separation from her baby! The results from his scans were very positive. His MRI brain scan showed that all parts of the brain were active and that there had been no bleeding. A further test of his reflexes and joints suggested that he was in every way an ordinary baby… with an extraordinary story to tell.
We feel so lucky to have him, our little miracle… we also felt for those who were not or might not be so fortunate each with their own lives and families affected. A couple who also had a baby in similar circumstances that has been given two weeks to live, the only difference between Alfie and her being four short minutes. We have also found out that the hospital give up resuscitation after ten minutes, Alfie got in with 120 seconds to spare. There will always be someone somewhere going through what we went through and worse… at the moment there is a baby in the John Hunter lying in an incubator, released into the world months before its due date of the 27th August. It is a testament to the work of the staff in the unit that any survive, we will be forever grateful.
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