Bizzare: This ‘ghost’ baby was born without blood in her body (PHOTOS)
A couple are counting their blessings after their baby survived by a twist of fate, after being born without blood with skin as white as white as a ‘ghost’.
The little baby, Hope Juarez was born at a hospital in Irvine, California. She suffered from a rare condition that meant when she was born 80 per cent of her blood had drained out of her body.
Daily Mail reports:
The baby’s father, Josh Juarez said: ‘She was crying and they brought her over to us and she was really pale.
‘I knew that something was really wrong when they started pricking at her feet trying to get blood to come out and there was no blood coming out.’
Dr Marielle Nguyen, a neonatologist at Kaiser Permanente, Irvine Medical Center,
explained: ‘She probably lost about 80 per cent or more. She was pale. She was really white.’
Doctors performed an emergency C-section six weeks ago. Her only hope for survival was a blood transfusion, ABC Local reported.
Speaking about her pregnancy, mother Jennifer Juarez, 27, said: ‘She would kick around 10 times within half an hour, which is a lot.’
But three weeks before her due date, the kicking stopped. She went to her midwife.
‘She asked me, “Well what’s your gut feeling?” And I said, “I don’t know. I just feel like something’s off. Something’s not right,”‘ said Jennifer.Relieved: Hope with her parents Jennifer and Josh
Hope had been kicking away healthily in the womb before it suddenly stopped
Doctors saved Hope’s life by giving her a blood transfusion and she’s now a healthy six-week-old baby
Hope suffered from a fetal-maternal hemorrhage. The only other known recent case of a so-called ‘ghost white baby’ surviving at birth occurred in the UK in 2012.
There were similar circumstances. The mother in that case also noticed her daughter had stopped kicking.
Slight loss of fetal blood occurs in 98 per cent of pregnancies, but hardly ever to this degree and rarely do babies survive.
‘We don’t know what causes it. A lot of it is just it happens spontaneously. Sometimes the cause could be a motor vehicle accident, trauma, or where we have placental rupture, where the placenta suddenly just comes off the uterine wall,’ Dr Nguyen told ABC Local.
None of that happened to Jennifer, so why Hope lost all her blood is unknown. How to prevent fetal-maternal hemorrhage is unknown, too.
Doctors said the mother saved her daughter’s life because she noticed when her baby stopped kicking and got medical attention right away.
If she had waited, even just an hour or two, doctors say Hope would not be alive today.
