Kate Ogg, 29, was anxious as she waited in her Brisbane obstetrician’s office. Her twins, conceived via in vitro fertilization, weren’t due for another 14 weeks, but she’d been feeling painful contractions. After a hurried exam, her obstetrician gave her the news she had to go to the hospital immediately and lay quietly in a hospital bed in hopes of stopping her labor. It didn’t work. After a week, her contractions started to intensify again. There was no holding these babies back. The doctors told her, accompanied by her husband David, she was wheeled into the delivery room where a team of 14 doctors, nurses, midwives, and neonatologists waited for her, along with two resuscitation carts.
As her first baby, a little boy, was born, Ogg caught a glimpse of a floppy white body. Was that what a preemie should look like? She had no idea. As the team rushed to insert a tube into his lungs, Ogg delivered her second baby, whom they would name Emily. The little girl let out a cry, and for the first time, Ogg realized something might be wrong with the silent boy they’d planned to call Jamie. Immediately, the maternity ward’s monitoring system started sending warning sounds as Jamie lay silent and motionless. The doctors knew something was wrong, and everyone gathered around little Jamie. Mom Kate felt that something was very, very wrong with her son. Doctors worked for 20 minutes to save Jamie, but they finally had to face the fact that the boy was dead. The boy’s parents were devastated, of course, and asked to hold him for a moment to say goodbye.
“I saw him gasp,” but the doctor said it was no use. “I took Jamie off,” the doctor asked everyone to leave. “He was cold, and I just wanted him to be warm,” Kate told the Daily Mail. Kate asked her husband to take off his shirt and crawl into bed with her so they could both warm Jamie with their skin. Kate kept Jamie on her chest for two hours. She hugged him and patted him, and she told him that Jamie’s sister Emily was doing well and that they wanted him to wake up and come home with them. Jamie continued to gasp for breath now and then, but the doctors told Kate that the gasps were just reflexes and that they shouldn’t hope for much. The couple had been trying to have children for years, and they couldn’t stand the thought of losing Jamie, but their son hadn’t given up yet.
After having skin-to-skin contact with his mother for two hours, Jamie suddenly began breathing regularly. At first, Kate didn’t think it could be true, and the doctors were shocked when they realized that Jamie had actually lived. Quickly, the doctor listened to the baby’s chest. By now, Jamie’s lungs were inflated. He was breathing unaided, and he had regained full color. The medical team rushed Jamie to intensive care.
Ogg had stumbled onto a practice encouraged in many maternity hospitals around the world: placing newborn babies on their mothers’ skin, especially if they are premature. It’s called kangaroo mother care. Just like a kangaroo pouch provides a nurturing environment for a just-born joey, it’s thought that a mother’s chest provides the closest approximation to the environment of the womb. It helps the baby’s chance of survival.
Kate’s husband David said, “Luckily, I’ve got a very strong, very smart wife. She instinctively did what she did. If she hadn’t done that, Jamie probably wouldn’t be here.” The event was a true miracle, and thanks to Kate and David, both of the children survived. After a while in the hospital, the miracle baby was finally able to go home. It’s been six years since Jamie and Emily were born, and both kids are doing well today, and they’ve even got a little brother.
Kate and David worried that Jamie would have brain damage as a result of his miraculous birth, but he hasn’t shown any signs of it. In fact, he’s just like any other six-year-old. “I’m so happy to see how Jamie has grown up. If his mom hadn’t been so stubborn and held on to him, Jamie probably wouldn’t be alive today.”
