A CORK MOTHER whose baby died about 30 minutes after he was born has called for anomaly scans to be more available for expectant mothers.
Diane Magee gave birth to baby Christopher fifteen months ago but her child died soon afterwards. He had a foetal anomaly that was not noticed until she began to develop complications at about 32 weeks of her pregnancy.
Speaking on The Neil Prendeville Show on Cork’s Red FM, Magee said she was on the public system during her pregnancy and had four scans up until that point but that none were the anomaly scan offered to private patients.
A few days short of 32 weeks, she began to feel something was wrong and went to Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH) to have things checked out.
“Within 14 minutes my whole life changed. The fantastic doctor that delivered Christoper came in and they just said the baby has to come out, the baby needs to come out, the heartbeat’s really low,” the mother told the show.
She said, ‘how many weeks are you?’ and I said just shy of 32 weeks and she said ‘I’m sorry his head is only measuring 25 and a half weeks. So that was it.
After delivering the child, Magee fell asleep under anesthetic but woke before her young boy died.
“He hung on to see his mummy,” she said.
My husband had him in his hands and he had the awful deal of telling me when I woke up that I had a beautiful baby boy but he wasn’t going to live long.
Magee explained that the post-mortem carried out on the child showed that he had a number of anomalies that caused his premature death. Had they been spotted sooner, she explains, he would not have been saved but she would have been better prepared.
“I didn’t know about the scan and every mother should get that scan. It should just be just such a basic. I believe it was Christopher’s way, that I didn’t have to suffer any more,” she says.
“It would have been nice to know. Women need to find out this out.”
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