Translation Article Margriet

´My pregnancy ended in a nightmare. Julia´s death could have been prevented´ Marlou (27)

My husband Robert and I longed for a baby. We felt we were ready to surround a baby with our love and provide it with a great future.
We were verjoyed when we found out I was pregnant. I felt great during the pregnancy. Not obnoxious and everyone said I was radiant. According to the medical check-ups everything was going well.
Just before the delivery the babyroom was made ready and together with my mom, we had bought a picture album and a book where the guests could write something down for our baby.
In the 38th week my membranes broke. Because there were no contractions I had to go to the hospital to be induced. I got a bellymeter around my belly to measure the heart beat of our baby. It was just right.
The assistant-doctor brought in a pressure catheter and was about to screw an electrode on the head of our baby, to check on the heart beat of our little one. But she did not even get to it, because then it was when the nightmare started.

I was enormously frigthened, when a gulf of blood came out of my vagina, after the insertion of the pressurecatheter.  I saw on the face of the assistent-doctor that there was something wrong. She called the obstetrician. I lost more blood and the obstetrician screwed the electrode on our baby´s head. The heartrate was dropping. I was wheeled to the operating room immediately for an emergency C-section. 15 Minutes later, our daugther Julia came to this world. She was very pale and her little heart was not beating. The doctors have tried everything they could to save her.

When I woke up I saw green jackets everywhere. Everyone looked very sad and I heard Robert crying heart-rending. He laid Julia down with me. She did not live anymore.

They explained to us what went wrong. Julia´s umbilical cord was velamentously inserted: the blood vessels of our baby which are coming from the placenta, were partly running unprotectedly through the membranes. Only then they came together into the umbilical cord. According to the doctors there was also Vasa Previa. This means that the bloodvessels are in front of the birth channel. Velamentous insertion happens in 1:50 pregnancies and the chance of these unprotected bloodvessels running in front of the birth channel is 1:3000.
When they brought in the pressure catheter, one of these unprotected bloodvessels was hit which caused our baby to bleed to death. The blood which came out of my vagina was Julia´s blood.

My husband and I can hardly cope with loosing a perfectly healthy baby because of medical intervenance. We were inside an educational hospital with the most advanced equipment, which was fatal for Julia.

Because we wanted to know more about velamentous insertion and vasa previa I´ve been surfing on the Internet a lot. We discovered that our situation could have been prevented. Velamentous insertion can be seen with a transvaginal ultrasound. To confirm the diagnoses they have to do a Color Doppler ultrasound which shows the bloodflows. When diagnosed in advance they will always decide to do a C-section around the 36th week, because the pressure of the baby against the veins can press off the blood- and oxygen supply.

Of course Robert and I are going through a rough time, but we´re trying to turn our grief into something positive. We have set up a website with information about velamentous cord insertion and vasa previa. We also started an email supportgroup for parents who have gone through the same as we have.

The website of Robert and Marlou can be found at http://home.wanadoo.nl/~robert.marlou
The email supportgroup can be found at www.egroups.com/group/vasa_previa