Loran Denison, 27, shared her devastating experience after she gave birth with her little baby that died 10 hours later.
Loran was pregnant with her fourth child when she discovered that the baby had Edward’s Syndrome during the 15th week of the pregnancy.
Edward’s syndrome is a rare but very dangerous condition that causes the baby to die before or shortly after being born.
Loran and her partner Scott Watson, 35, who works as a laborer, made a heart-breaking decision to take a medical abortion after being informed that there is a great possibility the baby will not live.
While she doesn’t want to be discouraged by anyone from making the right decision for them, she watched her son die and said that the experience was “torture”.
“I’m glad I had that bit of time with him, but it also made the situation much harder,” she said. “They told me he had typical Edwards’ Syndrome so he would pass away before or just after birth. My boy had a lionheart.”
“I thought I had done the hard bit when I made the difficult decision to have an abortion, but now it feels ten times worse,” she added. “I just want other mums to know in case this happens to them.”
“I had to watch his heartbeat getting slower and watch his life draining out of him. You just want to keep your children alive. It was like torture,” Loran explained. “None of the doctors thought he would be born alive. When my partner picked him up after he was born, he said ‘his heart is beating’, and they said ‘no way’.”
“When I took the first tablet on the sixth, they said it would stop the pregnancy, heartbeat, and everything, so we expected he wouldn’t be alive when he was born,” she continued. “They didn’t check for a heartbeat before inducing labor, and I wish they had. I don’t have words for how awful it was.”
Only 13 in 100 infants with Edwards’ Syndrome who are born alive survive up until their first birthday.
Loran took a tablet to stop the pregnancy on April 6 and returned to the Women and Newborn Unit at Burnley General Hospital on April 8 to deliver the baby.
“I went in for a medical abortion because he was carrying Edwards’ Syndrome,” she said. “We had already said our goodbyes when we went in on the 8th because I’d taken the termination tablet on the sixth.”
Loran, Scott, and the doctors were shocked when the little angel, Kiyo Bleu Watson was born alive on April 9 at 3:50 PM, weighing 150g. They had him blessed and christened in hospital while he was alive.
“They said his heart will stop in the next half hour, and I kept ringing the bell to say he was still alive, and I said, ‘do you just leave him’ and they said yes,” she sadly said.
Though the couple is glad to have met him, Loran said it was heartbreaking to wait 10 hours watching their newborn son fight for his life. The boy died on April 10 at 2:30 AM.
After little Kiyo Bleu died, they brought him home to be with Loran, Scott, and their three other children for four days. The whole family spent time with him in a special crib with a cold mattress until he needed to go to a funeral parlor on April 14 for his funeral.
He spent time with his big brother Rocco Watson, six, and sisters Bunni Rose, three, and Romee Beau, two.
“It was awful, I can’t get my head around how he survived,” Loran said. “I don’t even have a word for how horrible it feels. There is a person I’ve read about who has survived with Edwards’ Syndrome to 40.”
“Kiyo Bleu was so strong now I wonder if he would have survived,” Loran said. “His heartbeat was so strong you could feel it.”
“If I had known he would be born alive I probably would have made a different decision,” she said. “I thought I was doing the right thing but now I think I have done the wrong thing.”