A new mother feared for her newborn’s life after the baby started vomiting blood. Kate Clifford (37) experienced a textbook pregnancy and birth with her second son, Blake, who was born in March. However, the smooth course was interrupted by a shocking twist, which doctors have not yet encountered with such a small baby, the newspaper writes.
The pregnancy with Blake was uneventful and she gave birth to him a day before his due date. However, shortly after the birth, the doctors noticed that Blake has cyanosis (a condition where the skin or lips turn blue or grey) and has difficulty breathing, requiring him to be put on a ventilator.
After being disconnected from the machine, Kate was nursing him when she suddenly noticed that he was vomiting blood, which she also found in his diaper, leading to a transfer to the hospital and an emergency blood transfusion. “He was very nervous and I couldn’t get him to eat again. I was holding him and he was throwing up all this blood. It was coming out of his nose, it was just everywhere.” Kate described the painful moments.
“They didn’t know what was causing the blood loss. He kept losing it, he was spitting it out, it was coming out of his butt. The blood kept coming and they were draining it. He was constantly bleeding,” brought up the disturbing situation.
Vigilant medical staff replenished Blake’s blood and sought a solution as the operation could have resulted in him bleeding out. Despite initial speculation that he had swallowed something that was now causing him to bleed, this theory was dismissed as x-rays came back clean. At the age of nine days, he finally underwent a procedure in which a camera was inserted into his neck to determine the cause of the bleeding.
Examination revealed that the bleeding was from two large ulcers in the stomach caused by gastritis. “They said they’d never seen that in a newborn. They tried everything they could without opening it all the way. If they found something, they would then have to cut it open from side to side, which would be a major operation… but we were extremely lucky because when they got there with the optical instrument, they could see all the ulcers.” Kate said.
Hospital staff gave Blake medication to relieve ulcers and gastritis, an inflammation of the stomach lining, and inserted a feeding tube directly into his intestines to prevent the condition from worsening. Now eight-month-old Blake is doing well after being released from hospital and Kate is looking forward to his first Christmas with second son Nolan, five.
