My name is John and my wife is Dawn - we lost John Robert Haley on September 9, 2000.  Prior to all this he was completely healthy - no where was there any indication of danger.

     The doctors and nurses began to care for Dawn as soon as we arrived but were clearly somewhat confused. "How could there be so much bleeding and yet the mother be in no pain?" Since the baby's heart rate was high (although dipping then getting high again) they assumed he was fine. I now know that as he lost blood and his blood pressure was dropping due to loss of blood his little heart was trying to compensate by beating faster. The signal was not one of strength but of immediate danger.

     The doctors missed this and even went to far as to "hold" on the c-section. I believe they were waiting for the primary caregiver to arrive from the suburbs....and they even thought since the heart rate was high that a vaginal birth was still possible. They even approached me with this choice in the waiting room - I was shocked the c-section had still not been performed. I insisted they do the c-section. I felt something was wrong. All I got was some discussion about how a c-section is a serious procedure and not to be taken lightly. I strongly believe ~20 minutes was wasted.

     Eventually they decided to start the c-section - approximately 1 minute before his birth John Robert's heart stopped. When they pulled him out he was completely white (no blood) - after 25 minutes of resuscitation they brought him back.

     Apparently as Dawn's water broke it tore across the umbilical cord - the blood that began to spill starting at the restaurant was John Robert's blood. After the birth the doctor showed me the placenta and told me about velamentous insertion of the cord. This was the first time I had heard of it - They said he was VERY sick. I did not know if he was going to be normal or retarded. I never considered death.
The damage to his internal organs was too great however - he passed away 2 days later as organ after organ began to seize or create problems for other organs. The biggest issue was we were never able to raise his blood pressure to acceptable levels.....meaning outlying organs continued to be starved for blood. His brain activity was also a big problem. His kidneys never started working. Many other problems were occurring.

Yes I am angry - on two fronts:

1. We were a high risk pregnancy because we have difficulty getting pregnant and because we had a miscarriage prior to John Robert. We were often observed via ultrasound and Doppler - nothing was mentioned - why wasn't the condition detected?
    
2. We gave him every chance by arriving at the hospital within minutes - yet I know 5-20 minutes were wasted misdiagnosing the condition as a placental abruption. Yet as I do research and look at the symptoms between the two (placental abruption and vasa previa) they are different enough that this should not have been missed.

     My wife is on occasion still very much in denial. One moment she is "fine" - although she's upset about the time it will take to have another baby she is willing to move on. The next minute she's in complete disbelief this happened and is waiting for a call that there was a mistake and everything is "all right".  The latter happens often when she wakes up in the morning or in the middle of the night. She says she dreams the baby is still alive inside her. I'm looking forward to meeting you all and introducing my wife - we are having great difficulty relating this grief experience to others. The closest we have found is someone who had a child die of SIDS. Thanks for creating this group.

~ John Haley