I gave birth to my twin girls, Megan and Imogen at 23+5 in April 2010 after a very difficult pregnancy. Megan didn't live very long, but they managed to get Imogen into NICU and she was doing really well, much better than they expected.
Imogen died at 9 days old of a pulmonary haemorrhage. At the time we declined a post Morton as she was so tiny and we felt she had been through enough. Plus, we felt it wouldn't tell us anything we didn't know and it probably wouldn't have.
However, I have two things that are playing on my mind and I don't think I can get any closure from them.
The first is that the day before Imogen died her ventilator tube had slipped too far down into her lung. This is something potentially fatal to such a tiny baby. I didn't mention it as a possible cause at our review appointment with the NICU doctor, as I didn't want it to seem like I was trying to apportion blame. However, whether this is a possible cause of her death is really playing on my mind.
Secondly. I was on the blood thinner clexane after the birth and expressing my breast milk for my daughter, which she had tiny amounts of. I was told at the time that it is safe to breast feed whilst on clexane. However, I have since found out that you cannot donate breastmilk to the UK milk banks if you are on clexane as they say:
"The anti-coagulant medication clexane (enoxaparin) and tinzaparin (Innophep) shouldn?t appear in the breastmilk of a mother who is injecting it, as it is such a large molecule. It is poorly bio available and therefore the amount passing into breastmilk is unlikely to be absorbed. However the potential risks to a baby on a NICU mean that, until further evidence is available, mothers using clexane (enoxaparin) should not donate breastmilk to a milk bank until at least 48 hours after they have stopped the medication. Milk bank staff should check with donors whether this medication was used and if so, carefully assess when the mother stopped taking it."
So, of course, now I feel like make the medication was in my breast milk and caused a problem, maybe combined with the ventilation tube.
I don't know how to even get answers to my questions about these things, or even if there's any point in trying to do so.
It would be the girls's third birthday this April and I am finding it all very hard. I don't talk to anyone about it in real life, although I do mention the girls in conversation.
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Bereavement
It's too late, but I feel I need answers
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Midori1999 · 24/02/2013 18:30
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