Emily Alice

Emily was born on 6th October 2006. It had been a very eventful pregnancy, with episodes of bleeding, a low placenta and then pre-eclampsia. These complications eventually led to placental abruption and Emily was born by emergency cesarian section at just over 25 weeks gestation. Her apgar scores at birth were good as I had been given steroids to develop her lungs only a week earlier!

For the first week of her life, Emily fought well. We became more involved with her care, changing her nappies, tube feeding her and everyday they would increase the volume of breastmilk given to her.

Emily had some special people visiting her, including grandparents, aunties, uncles and special friends, she would always be kicking and wriggling, entertaining her crowd!

When Emily had been born, they had found an open duct in her heart which is very common in premature babies, they started her on medication to rectify this when she was 7 days old as she seemed to be getting stronger. This is where things started to go wrong.

Emily developed septicaemia from the site in her umbilical cord where her lines were going in. Her kidney's began to fail and she became very oedemic. She eventually was so swollen that she couldnt move and because her kidney's were not excreting, the level of potassium in her body was dangerously high, they suspected that this would result in cardiac arrest and immediate death.

They asked us if we wanted to have Emily baptised but we knew that God would take her straight to Heaven regardless of whether or not she was baptised. We have a close relationship with our minister so asked him to come and pray over Emily. One of the neonatal nurses was also a Christian and she too took time to pray over Emily as did our friend.

Around 1.30am on 17th October, the hospital phoned to say that Emily's heart had stopped beating twice already and that if we wanted to go to the unit we could. I didn't want to go, partly because I thought she would pull through, partly because I had not slept for days and partly because I didn't want to admit reality.

We did go up and were taken aside a little while later. We had noticed a few days earlier that Emily had been having seizures constantly, from my experience with children with epilepsy I knew that this was not good news. The consultant explained that Emily was not going to make it. Her brain had been severely damaged by the seizure activity and her lungs had collapsed. She had effectively tried to die three times already and bringing her back each time was serving no purpose other than giving us more time with her. We agreed that should she stop fighting again, we would let her go.

Over the next few hours, Emily's condition deteriorated, she was in a constant state of seizure and her body temperature was dropping. We knew that she was leaving us. Again, we were taken aside and it was explained that Emily was only with us because the ventilator was keeping her lungs open. We eventually had to agree with the recommendation that her machines be turned off and she be allowed to die in my arms, rather than in an incubator surrounded by medical staff.

We watched as they took out her morphine line, her diazepam line etc etc. I then took her into my arms and held her tight. Colin and I told her how much we loved her and watched as they took out her ventilation tube, finally we could see her beautiful mouth, however it also meant watching her take her last breaths. A few minutes later she left us.

Although Emily's life was far too short, the impact she made was amazing. We have raised over £2000 for Tommy's in memory of Emily and many people have been encouraged in their Christian faith because of her.

We are so blessed to have been chosen to be her parents and only wish she could have stayed with us longer.