Mum resuscitated own baby born 13 weeks early
Amy O’Riordan, 26, from Eston, Middlesbrough, tore 2lb 5oz daughter Jess from the embryonic sack and gave her mouth-to-mouth before paramedics arrived. Then she handed the poorly baby to rapid responder Colin Gibson with the words “please save her”.
Eight weeks on, tiny Jess remains in the James Cook University Hospital, but has made good progress and now weighs 5lb 9oz.
O’Riordan has kept in touch with Gibson and the ambulance crew who arrived later. “They saved my baby daughter’s life.”
The drama began on Jan 3 when O’Riordan, who has a son Louie, 7, woke in the night with pains and felt the need to push despite being only 27 weeks pregnant.
She gave birth in her living room on the duvet where the night before she had been watching DVDs with her partner Mark Thoms. He dialled 999 and paramedics were sent to the scene. But before they arrived O’Riordan tore open the sack and picked out Jess. She said: “She was not breathing and she was blue, all curled up in a ball.
“I thought she was gone.”
Using mother’s instinct and what she had seen in hospital dramas on TV, she rubbed her baby, pinched her nose, and gently gave her mouth-to-mouth in the crucial minutes before help arrived.
When Gibson, a rapid response paramedic team leader from Redcar Station, got there, he began chest compressions and gave the baby oxygen.
Then the ambulance crew of Michelle Trafford and Alan Barnby, also from Redcar, arrived and she cut Jess’s cord.
While Barnby looked after the new mother, the other two helped Jess, who started to make tiny breaths.
O’Riordan said: “Just as we arrived at the hospital Jess gave out a tiny whimper... I was just so grateful to the amazing paramedics; they saved my baby daughter’s life.”
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