In 2014, 27-year-old Beth Clemison was experiencing a healthy pregnancy when she noticed that her baby boy was kicking less than normal. According to the Daily Mail, she told her family about it but they said it was probably because he had grown and had less space to kick.
However, Beth decided to go to the hospital anyway because her intuition told her something was terribly wrong.
She explained, “Up until then I’d had the most amazing pregnancy – I only started showing at about six months. But then towards the end of my pregnancy I just knew that it didn’t feel right. He’d been really bouncy up until that point and then over the weekend he just slowed down and was barely kicking at all. When I mentioned that I had felt my baby moving around less, everyone said it was simply a case of him getting so big that he had less room to kick. It was a motherly instinct – I knew something was wrong.”
Then, at the hospital, doctors told her that her baby was perfectly fine and had a normal heart rate. Initially they wanted to send her home but Beth refused to leave until they gave her an ultrasound.
Unbelievably, the scan showed that the protective amniotic fluid around her son had drained away and she was rushed in for an emergency cesarean section.
After an examination at Wrexham Maelor Hospital on September 29, medics told Mrs Clemison her baby wasn’t in trouble. She said: ‘I was hooked up to a monitor, and they were measuring baby’s heart rate and everything appeared normal. ‘They said everything was fine and suggested I just went home to wait for labor to start naturally.’
But Mrs Clemison could not shake the feeling that something was wrong, and she asked for another examination. She said: ‘I still felt that something wasn’t right so I said I wasn’t leaving because something was definitely wrong with my baby.’ She was sent to the maternity ward, where after another examination she was once again told that everything was fine.
But she still had a nagging feeling that there was a problem with her son, and eventually doctors agreed to give her a normal ultrasound scan the next day.
When she returned to the hospital and was scanned, Mrs Clemison said the nurse suddenly went quiet.
She then revealed the shocking news that Theo was not being protected in the womb by the barrier of protective fluid. Most babies have a 4cm thick layer of amniotic fluid, but Theo’s was only 1cm at its very deepest and needed to be delivered immediately.
But they rushed her straight to the maternity ward and gave her steroid injections to help Theo’s lungs develop as he was born prematurely. Theo was born by C-section two days later on October 2, weighing 6lbs 14oz. He went to special care unit for a morning and spent two more days in hospital before finally returning to his new home.
Now Beth’s son, Theo, is eight months old but doctors say if he wasn’t delivered when he was, the consequences could have been severe. Beth said, “It was my natural mother’s intuition that made me sure something wasn’t right with Theo and kept me at the hospital, even after I’d be reassured that everything was fine. Now I want to let all mums-to-be know that noticing changes in your baby’s movement and trusting your instinct can save a baby’s life.”
She concluded, “They said that if I had left it any longer to get help it could have been a very different story.”
Last year, in a medical miracle in India, a baby was born at 29 weeks of pregnancy after the amniotic fluid inside the mother’s womb completely dried out.
