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- Willow Rose from Worcester stopped breathing at birth for eight minutes
- She then lay ‘frozen’ in a cooler blanket for three days
- Incredibly, the newborn made a full recovery and recently turned one
A baby girl who stopped breathing at birth for eight minutes and lay ‘frozen’ for three days has stunned medics by making a full recovery.
Willow Rose Forrest, from Ronkswood, Worcester, was put in a state of hypothermia to prevent brain damage after doctors battled to get her heart beating again.
Despite it being touch-and-go for the newborn, Willow pulled through and recently celebrated her first birthday.
Touch and go: Little Willow (seen above) who stopped breathing at birth for eight minutes and lay ‘frozen’ in a cooler blanket for three days has gone on to make a full recovery
Smiles all round: Willow Rose from Ronkswood, Worcester, pictured with her mother Bex and father Martin, pulled through and recently celebrated her first birthday
Willow is a perfectly healthy child with no apparent mental or physical difficulties.
Parents Bex, 37, and Martin, 44, say they have been overjoyed with her progress.
Willow was delivered by emergency C-section on April 20 last year after her heart-rate dropped during labour, but when she was born it had stopped beating completely.
Surgeons at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital tried to resuscitate her and - after eight agonising minutes - medics detected a heartbeat.
Strong-willed: Incredibly, Willow is a perfectly healthy child with no apparent mental or physical difficulties
Testing times: Willow was delivered by emergency C-section on April 20 last year after her heart-rate dropped during labour, but when she was born it had stopped completely
Willow’s distraught parents had to look on as she was bundled into an incubator and wheeled into the High Intensity Neonatal Care Unit.
A specialist team from St Michael’s Hospital, Bristol, then delivered ‘Cooling Therapy’ - a treatment that pumps freezing water to cool the baby for three days to prevent brain damage.
Astonishingly, 15 months after she was put in the refrigerator suit, which cooled her entire body from 37C to 33.5C, Willow has a clean bill of health.
Describing the chain of events, full-time mum Bex, who lives with senior project engineer Martin, said: ‘It was a perfectly healthy, normal nine months up until when I went into labour.
‘Even when I went to have a C-section it was planned because I just hadn’t been progressing for four days.
‘I was so drugged up I didn’t realise, but after 15 minutes it turned into an emergency C-section because Willow’s heart-rate suddenly dropped.
‘All these people suddenly came rushing in so I was aware something was wrong.
‘I knew when they had taken her out of me, I just kept saying: “I can’t hear her crying, what’s going on? Why isn’t she crying?”
‘Everybody expects to hear their baby cry when they are born and the longer it went on the worse it got.
‘It was the worst feeling in the world. Martin was amazing, he was telling me it would all be OK.
‘I couldn’t see what was going on. I just saw her getting wheeled past me into ITU - I didn’t even get to hold her.’
The specialist team from Bristol arrived within an hour and after placing Willow - who weighed 7lb 8oz - in the cooling suit she was taken to St Michael’s Hospital that night.
Describing the chain of events, mum Bex, who lives with senior project engineer Martin, said: ‘It was a perfectly healthy, normal nine months up until when I went into labour’
Giving back: Mother Bex completed a 70m zip wire challenge on August 14 to raise over £1,000 for charity Cots for Tots
However, there were no beds free for Bex, who had to stay at Gloucester Hospital until she discharged herself on April 20 to be reunited with her daughter.
She said: ‘It was agonising. I told Martin to go to Bristol with Willow because even though she didn’t know him yet I felt she needed someone familiar there.
‘I hadn’t even held my own baby. So after two days I gave up waiting and just left the hospital myself.
‘It was amazing, Martin picked me up and at last I got to be with Willow. Although I couldn’t hold her, I could touch her little hands.
‘She didn’t cry for four weeks. Because she had so many tubes and they hurt her throat, she didn’t know how to cry.
‘It’s strange, but all we wanted was to hear our baby cry. Now she does plenty of that though.’
Touching on the cooling therapy which helped save his daughter’s life, Martin continued: ‘[It] really is amazing.
‘Essentially, when the brain is starved of oxygen the damage is like a fire that continues to burn in the head.
‘By cooling the whole baby straight away it just stops that happening and prevents any further damage.
Doting dad: Touching on the cooling therapy which helped save his daughter’s life, Martin said it was ‘amazing’
‘They put her in a little suit connected to a refrigerator unit for three days, and then on the fourth day gradually brought her core temperature back up.
‘She has just been amazing in her recovery. We have been told there is still a risk that she could suffer developmental issues, but so far she is perfectly fine.
‘Those minutes really were awful. When she was taken away in the incubator her legs were kicking in a cyclical movement and I thought she might have been fitting.
‘Now she’s just a perfectly healthy baby.’
Bex completed a 70m zip wire challenge on August 14 to raise more than £1,000 for charity Cots for Tots.
The organisation funds equipment for premature children and has a home opposite the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at St Michael’s Hospital for parents to stay at.
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