A little girl who fought to survive after being born with no blood in her body is now fighting fit – and has set her sights on a career as a Jiu Jitsu instructor.
Maisy Vignes astounded doctors with a haemoglobin level of flat ZERO when she was delivered by emergency C section in December 2009.
But the little girl from Tramore in Co Waterford made a miraculous recovery and is now “a regular little nine-year-old” according to her proud mum Emma.
Emma told the Irish Sunday Mirror: “She does Jiu Jitsu and mixed martial arts and she loves both. She’s a real tomboy. She was born a fighter and she’s still a fighter.”
Maisy’s entire blood supply was absorbed by 35-year-old Emma during pregnancy in a case which baffled consultants at Waterford Regional Hospital.
Medics feared that the baby girl, who was born six weeks premature, would be left brain damaged after being starved of oxygen in the womb.
But after two weeks in intensive care and three blood transfusions – the first delivered through the umbilical cord – she turned a corner and has no ill effects.
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Emma said: “She’s met all her milestones, she’s in third class now and is doing well. She made her Communion last year and everything is as it should be.
“Thank God because when she was born they feared she might be brain damaged. But now she’s in medical journals and she thinks she’s famous.
“There was a baby born in the UK with a haemoglobin level of five, but Maisy was zero. When they tried to take a blood sample there was none, just serum.
“There are cases recorded of people surviving with a haemoglobin level of four, but for anyone to survive after having no blood at all was unheard of.”
Emma went into hospital for a routine check-up at 34 weeks and doctors quickly detected a problem, so she was wheeled straight to the delivery suite.
Recalling the traumatic birth, she said: “They monitored me for a couple of hours and knew straight away that she wasn’t responding.
“She was born at 11.11pm. She was basically dead when she came out. She was completely porcelain, she was limp, she didn’t cry.
“We were told there was a very slight chance that she would survive. They had never seen this before, never expected to be dealing with a baby born with no blood.
“At 3am my husband got down to have a quick peek at her in the incubator, there were tubes everywhere. But she came through it.”
Maisy’s fighting spirit never left her and now the third-class pupil at Holy Cross National School in Tramore is fiercely protective of her four-year-old brother Ellis.
Despite the trauma of Maisy’s birth Emma and her graphic designer husband Mook decided to have another child so she would have a younger sibling.
Medics at Waterford Regional Hospital were on stand-by for his birth but he was born a week over his due date after a 12-hour labour and everything was normal.
Doctors have been unable to offer a full explanation for Maisy’s blood loss in the womb and to this day Emma suspects it could be linked to the swine flu jab.
The vaccine was administered to the elderly, young children and pregnant women in 2009 and has since been linked to narcolepsy, with a test case due before the High Court in October 2019.
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Emma explained: “A week and a half before she was born I received the swine flu injection. I always thought it had something to do with it, because up to that point I had the perfect pregnancy.
“I always felt in my heart of hearts that that was the cause. The day after the injection I started feeling unwell.
Three days later I was in A&E and they had to administer a steroid injection to help with her lungs.”
Maisy however remains totally unfazed about the medical emergency triggered by her birth and is busy dividing her time between her family, her friends and her love of animals.
Emma said: “She wants to be either a Jiu Jitsu coach or a zoologist when she grows up, one or the other.”
