Only aggressive care saved Gabriel

By Kate Beetham
Fight for Life, Series producer

A new series on BBC One follows real life patients in A&E and operating theatres with specially shot material and unique computer generated imagery to show the fight for survival from the inside.

Gabriel needed aggressive care

Faye Barker, 19, had a normal pregnancy and was looking forward to the birth of her first child.

What she didn't realise was that a fairly common complication would, in her case, put her baby's life in terrible danger as soon as he was born.

Baby Gabriel had MAS (meconium aspiration syndrome). Meconium is the baby's first waste product - a type of faeces that is normally passed during the early days of life.

But Gabriel excreted this in the womb, it combined with the amniotic fluid and then Gabriel inhaled this sticky substance.

It blocked his airways, and when he was born he was unable to breathe.

In around 10% of births babies have excreted meconium into the amniotic fluid.

It shows up as dark green stains in the fluid when a mother's water breaks.

Normally, it has not been inhaled, but in extreme cases, like Gabriel's, it can be life-threatening.

Extreme treatment

When Gabriel was born, at Hillingdon hospital, London, he was rushed to intensive care, and given very aggressive ventilation.

Faye was told to prepare for the worst

Faye was advised to have him baptised as his chances of surviving were so slim.

At only a few hours old Gabriel was transferred to Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Here he was put onto a machine called ECMO which acts as a heart and lung bypass machine: it removes waste from the blood and puts in oxygen, meaning that Gabriel's blood could be fully oxygenated for the first time since birth, buying him vital time.

The ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) machine is an extreme treatment for a newborn baby.

"We worry particularly about bleeding from the brain in a small baby. We wanted to keep Gabriel on ECMO for the shortest amount of time that we possibly could," said Dr Nick Piggott, of GOSH.

Normally a baby would only be on ECMO for a week at most, but Gabriel had to remain on the machine for 13 days, where he was constantly watched over by his mother, Faye.

"Something bad has got to happen to people for you to realise how precious or special that somebody is. I always knew how special he'd be," she said.

Vital rest

While his lungs rested on the machine, Gabriel's own under-developed immune system had time to start cleaning up the meconium that still coated his lungs.

Gabriel is now doing well

Finally after nearly two weeks Gabriel was able to come off the machine and Faye could hold her son for the first time.

"Obviously every mother thinks their baby's perfect but I just think he's such a fighter - for such a little baby to go through that much is unbelievable."

After being given odds of survival of around one in three, Gabriel is now at home with his mother and developing into a healthy, happy toddler.

Fight for Life will be broadcast on 9 July 2007 at 2100 BST on BBC One.