A baby who was born seven weeks early and “died for 11 minutes” just days later, is now a thriving five-month-old. Hailing baby Finley Lyman a “miracle,” life was a rollercoaster for his parents, special needs teaching assistant Jess Bray, 24, and joiner Cameron Lyman, 26, from the moment he was born weighing 4lb 5oz on October 4, 2021, at Derbyshire’s Chesterfield Royal Hospital.
Kept in for 15 days when Jess’ waters broke on October 3, Finley was born seven weeks before his due date. Once he was sent home he then also developed “a cold” with breathing problems, forcing his mum and dad to race him to A&E, where he had a cardiac arrest.
Transferred to Sheffield Children’s Hospital in South Yorkshire to recover, Jess, of Tibshelf, near Alfreton, Derbyshire, said: “My baby is an absolute miracle. Everything he has been through shows he has been determined to be here. I’m not a religious person, but I just kept praying, ‘Please let him be okay,’ and he was.”
A bicornate uterus, or heart shaped womb, had made Jess’ pregnancy relatively high risk, as it meant there was less room for a baby to grow and was known to increase the chance of a premature birth. While her morning sickness was so extreme she could only eat plain pasta, scans showed everything to be progressing “perfectly.”
It was only when she started having what she thought were false contractions, known as Braxton Hicks, two weeks before Finley’s birth, that things changed. Experiencing days of intermittent and increasingly painful contractions, Jess went to hospital on October 3 for a check-up, where her waters suddenly broke and Finley was born 20 hours later.
She said: “He came out blue and very limp and I couldn’t hear him crying. He went straight to the neonatal team that were waiting there by the bed and they worked on him for about five minutes until he was breathing. When I heard that cry, I was in absolute tears. It melted my heart.”
Seeing him properly for the first time five hours later in the neonatal intensive care unit, the bond was immediate. She said: “I had this overwhelming love for him, but there was also a lot of confusion and panic and thinking, ‘You shouldn’t be here this early,’ and, ‘Is he going to be okay?’ I’d never even given a baby a bottle before and holding him, he was so delicate, you just felt like you were going to break him.”
For 15 days, Finley remained in hospital for tests, checks and two courses of antibiotics to fight what was a suspected infection, while putting on some much needed weight. Cameron returned to work after a few days, choosing to save his paternity leave for his homecoming, but Jess remained by his side.
Doctors then confirmed Finley had two holes in his heart, but reassured the first-time parents that they would heal and sent them home. As Jess explained, “In my head this was it. I thought, ‘This is the start of our lives together and we can have a normal, happy, healthy baby'. But two days later, he started to have a cold.”
As well as a runny nose, Finley had what sounded like mucus at the back of his throat, although Jess’ health visitors reassured her that this was not unusual. Then, when his breathing worsened on November 7, she called NHS 111, who advised them to go to A&E, where less than 24 hours later, he suffered a cardiac arrest.
Diagnosed with the respiratory tract infection bronchiolitis, sepsis – a life threatening reaction to infection – and a collapsed lung, his parents were told his chances were slight. Then, less than 24 hours after arriving, at exactly 4am on November 8, Finley suffered a cardiac arrest where his heart stopped for 11 minutes, before doctors brought him back to life.
“It was the worst time of my life,” Jess said. “He had only been home 19 days and he was back in hospital. At 4am, all the alarms went off, Dad and I jumped up, the doctors ran in and saw his oxygen levels had dropped.”
She added: “They had to intubate him and asked us to leave the room, but I knew something wasn’t right. My partner was trying to reassure me, but I had this gut feeling something was very wrong.”
Once he was stabilised, Finley was transferred to Sheffield Children’s Hospital for further tests and to begin his recovery. “I went down to see him and I just broke down,” Jess explained.“I was stood next to him and held his hand and talked to him and reassured him but he looked terrible. He had all these tubes covering him and the machine was doing the breathing for him, it was so hard to see.”
She added: “But it still felt like a miracle that he was there. The doctor told me Finley opened his eyes after they brought him back and he started looking around the room as if to say, ‘What’s happened here?’ She said she would never forget him!”
Provided with family accommodation by The Sick Children’s Trust, a charity who help families with poorly children, it meant the couple could be by their baby’s side.
Jess said: “We were in the room next to the ICU, less than a minute from Finley’s bedside. We didn’t even know with Covid that we would both be allowed to stay, let alone to both be in the room next door if he needed us.”
She added: “It was such a relief. It meant so much to us.”
Luckily, just eight days after his heart stopped, Finley was healthy enough to go home.
Jess said: “We were so proud of him. We celebrated every little thing, whether it was a blood test coming back clear or his oxygen being lowered. To go from not breathing and your heart stopping to being able to go home in eight days amazed us.”
Still, Jess struggled to relax at first – terrified something would cause Finley to have another cardiac arrest. But while there have been other trips to the GP and hospital, for complications like a “floppy” larynx or voice box, causing noisy breathing in infants, since February Finley has been “happy and healthy”.
“He is absolutely thriving,” Jess said. “There is doubt over whether the cardiac arrest has caused brain damage, but there are no obvious signs from the MRI that it has. We won’t know till he is older but, so far, it looks positive.”
Now at five-and-a-half-months old, Finley is achieving all his milestones, rolling from side to side, smiling, grabbing toys and enjoying playtime – particularly with his disco ball.
“We are absolutely getting a sense of his personality now,” Jess said. “He loves to have a strop if I try to burp him after bottles, he is obsessed with hair, loves playing with mermaids in the bath and anything that lights up. He loves disco balls.
“We caught his first smile on Boxing Day and it made my Christmas. All I needed was to see that smile and know he was happy. It took me a while to let go of it all, but I want other mums like me to listen to their gut and follow their instincts.”
“We are making new memories now and we are so happy.”
Jess is keen to raise awareness of the Sick Children’s Trust. For more support and information go to: https://www.sickchildrenstrust.org/
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