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Please click here and register your support
Thank you to all those who are registering. Thank you for your stories. Thank you for your support. We cannot accept the current levels of care for our children in the Mid West. They are not enough. |
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Our Story
Sam was born by Caesarean Section on the 28th of June 2004 at 31 weeks.
He went immediately down to the Neo Natal Unit at the Maternity Hospital. He spent five days on a Ventilator before being able to manage breathing on his own. After this he spent a further six weeks in the Neo Natal Unit before being discharged to go home.
Initially at home everything went smoothly. He seemed to be feeding reasonably well. However, after two weeks at home the Apnoea Monitor which I had attached to him all the time began to alarm. At first, I thought the connection was loose, or the site needed to be reset where it was attached to him. But, the alarm continued to go off and I started to get worried. He had stopped feeding and was just becoming more pale and constantly sleeping. We went to Shannon Doc and from there over to the Regional Hospital into A&E.
Sam was seen very quickly but his condition was deteriorating rapidly. He was consistently having apnoeic attacks (stopping breathing) and was getting paler and paler. I was terrified.
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 The Awful Discovery
In my mind I had assumed all the time that we were in the general ward and that there was a high dependency unit on another corridor with an intensive care unit beside it along the lines of what we had seen in the neo natal section of the maternity hospital. It was at that moment that I realised. This is it. There is nothing else here for my baby except where we are right now. No other rooms. No other machinery. No ventilators to help him breathe. And since then I have found out that at that particular moment, those ventilators that he needed while desperately struggling to live, were sitting in boxes in the corridor just around the corner.
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Back to Neo Natal Maternity
Against all the rules, but thanks to the extraordinary efforts of the Consultant caring for Sam on that particular night - and the special case he put forward - Sam was re-admitted back into the Maternity Hospital in Limerick and put in isolation in the Special Care Baby Unit.
How many babies do not get re-admitted to the Maternity Hospital? Do all the Consultants go out on a limb and break the rules in special circumstances? Is this what determines whether your baby gets High Dependency Care in Limerick? An obliging Consultant in the Regional and staff prepared to break the rules at the Special Care Baby Unit in the Maternity. The thought of being in the situation again is terrifying.
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Turning a Corner
Sam was put in isolation in the Special Care Baby Unit at the Maternity and spent a further twenty four hours fighting with every breath. My husband, Paul, and I thought we were going to lose him.
But, finally, after a long and terrifying journey, he seemed to turn a corner and he began to improve.
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Haunted
We are now haunted by the experience. How many babies, with nowhere else to go, get sent up to the Adult Intensive Care Unit and lie beside eighty year old patients with MRSA while they fight for life in their little incubators? How many babies die because the machine they need is not up and running at the hospital and they don’t make the journey for High Dependency Care somewhere else?
How many people assume like me that if their baby becomes critically ill everything they need will be on hand at the Mid West Regional Hospital in Limerick?
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How many babies won't make it this Winter 2008/2009?
How can everything be just as it was four years ago?
How many mothers leave the Maternity Hospital in Limerick with their tiny neo-natal babies, perhaps born prematurely like Sam, and they are so delighted to be going home, to normalise finally what might have been a traumatic delivery, or a traumatic few weeks while their baby has been in hospital. How many of these mothers realise that if their tiny little baby goes seriously downhill soon after they are at home that they have nowhere to go. I didn’t know.
And Dublin is a long way to go when your baby needs High Dependency Support Services.
How many babies don’t make it?
How many babies won’t make it this Winter 2008/2009?
Please open the High Dependency Unit in Limerick.
Open It. Please.
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 Sam's First Year
Sam got pneumococcal Meningitis when he was six months old and was back in the hospital again for two more weeks.
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 Recovery
While it did take him some time to recover from this, once back on track, he has not looked back since.
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 Sam Aged Two
The Mock Marquee Wedding
When Sam was two years old, my neighbour and close friend helped me to organise a Mock Marquee Wedding to raise funds in support of the proposed High Dependency Unit due to open, we were told, at the Mid West Regional, that September, 2006.
I wanted to do something that would make right the nightmare we experienced, for other parents who found themselves in the same position.
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Open It. Please.
Yet still, this unit is not open. I was told afterwards a nasal CPAP machine was bought with our funds. I can only assume it is still in a box on the corridor like all the millions of euros of other equipment.
We owe it to Sam, our family, the entire community of friends around us in Ruan who gave us their help, and most of all, we owe it to the children of the Mid West, the babies who will find themselves out there struggling to breathe, to get this High Dependency Unit open.
Open It. Please.
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 Sam Today
Sam is a very happy and healthy four year old boy today.
We are lucky.
I often think that there must be many people with stories similar to our own who would also want to see this High Dependency Unit up and running for babies and children in the Mid West.
We need to work together and we need to get it Open.
Please get it contact with us if you would like to work with us on this.
Open It. Please.
Paula Montwill
086 8043227
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