A woman has defied medical odds to give birth to two children in nine
months - even though she was using contraception both times she became
pregnant.
Claire Ormrod (26) had her daughter Alice on
December
6, 2011, at 25 weeks, by emergency Caesarean. When she was born,
weighing just 1lb 3oz (500g), Alice was the smallest baby ever born in
Wales. Seven weeks later Ms Ormrod then became pregnant again, despite
being on the pill, and had healthy baby Gareth, weighing exactly 2lbs
(900g), at 29 weeks, also by emergency Caesarean, on September 7, 2012.
Doctors
have been stunned at the "medical impossibility" of the two babies
being born so close together. Alice and Gareth will be in the same class
when they start at a primary school in Rhyl, north Wales.
Ms
Ormrod, who jointly runs a martial arts company with her partner Gareth
Gee (36), has three older children - Molly (7), Jack (5) and Charlie
(2). All five were conceived in spite of precautions.
She said: "With every one of my children I was on the pill or the coil," she explained.
"I
was on the waiting list to be sterilised when I fell pregnant with
Gareth. The coil is supposed to be 99,99 percent effective and I was on
it when I had three of my children." She was in fact on a waiting list
to be sterilised when she discovered she was expecting for the fifth
time.
Given the ordeal she had so recently been through with
Alicebeing born so prematurely, Ms Ormrod said she was "absolutely
petrified" when she discovered she was pregnant again.
"My GP
said I should have a termination. He said it would end up killing me and
the baby and that it wouldn't be fair to put me through it. But I said
no,straight out. No one could believe it when we told them I was
pregnant again. They just couldn't get their heads round the fact that
the two babies would be so close together," said Ms Ormrod.
Had
Alice been born a week earlier, at the 24 weeks, she says doctors
wouldn't have tried to save her. Medical experts believe that babies
bornat this stage only have a tiny chance of survival. Ifthey do pull
through, they are more likely to have long-term health problems such as
lung conditions,learning difficulties and cerebral palsy.
Ms
Ormrod said: "She would have been a 24-week baby and they wouldn't have
thought she had a chance," she said. Alice was so ill that her family
had started arranging her funeral and gave her a hasty baptism.
Crucially, they were 90 minutes from switching off her life support
machine when she showed her first signs of life.
Ms Ormrod said:"We were told she was so ill, they would have turn off her life support machine, because she couldn't survive.
"One
hour before they were about to turn it off, she woke up, then she
started breathing on her own. She is a miracle baby, she is a fighter.
They told us there was no brain activity and then she woke up.
SOURCE
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