3:06 AM
Anonymous
Smiling, healthy and six months old, Olivia Norton is understandably the apple of her mother’s eye.
Yet when she was born doctors were stunned by her ‘snow-white’ appearance – because she had no blood in her body.
A rare condition meant her blood had run directly back into her mother’s circulatory system.
The newborn had such a low count of haemoglobin – the chemical which carries oxygen in red blood cells – that it could not officially be classed as blood.
She was given less than two hours to live but survived thanks to emergency transfusions which transformed her skin to pink.
Yesterday her mother told of her shock at a condition so unusual that it will be written into medical text books. ‘Olivia was my first baby, so I didn’t really know what to expect – but I certainly didn’t think she’d be that colour,’ said 31-year-old Louise Bearman, a barrister’s clerk from Witham, Ess*x.
‘I’ll never forget what the doctor’s notes said – “white and floppy”.’
Miss Bearman said she and her partner Paul Norton, 36, noticed Olivia had abruptly stopped kicking six weeks before she was due to be born.
After three days without movement they went to Broomfield Hospital, in Chelmsford, where doctors ordered an emergency caesarean.
The 5lb 3oz infant had blood haemoglobin levels of only three, compared with a normal 18. She was given two transfusions in the special care baby unit.
The condition is known as a fetomaternal haemorrhage, with severe cases occurring in one in 5,000 pregnancies. It can be spontaneous or as a result of trauma.
Neonatal nurse Sharon Pilgrim said she had never heard of such low haemoglobin levels. ‘It was a miracle Olivia survived. She was incredibly pale and had difficulties breathing.’
Miss Bearman added: ‘It was amazing when they put the blood in Olivia and she slowly turned pink. The hospital staff were amazing. They called Olivia the “miracle baby” and said if I hadn’t come in for treatment she would not have survived.
‘I want mums to realise how important a baby’s movement is in checking they are healthy. You have to trust your maternal instinct.’
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