A mum has spoken of her total devastation after her tiny baby was born alive after an abortion at 18 weeks, and survived for 10 hours.
Loran Denison was 15 weeks pregnant with her fourth child when she was told her son had Edwards' syndrome.
The rare and serious condition mean most children with Edwards' syndrome will die before or shortly after being born, or at a young age, with just 13 in 100 living past their 1st birthday.
Loran and partner Scott Watson, 35, made the agonising decision to have a medical abortion after being told he was unlikely to be born alive.
The 27-year-old took a tablet and returned to hospital to be induced at 18 weeks and four days - but was shocked when her son was born breathing and alive.
And while the mum says she doesn't want to deter anyone from making the right choice for them, she said watching him die was "torture".
Loran, a stay-at-home mum from Blackburn, Lancashire, said: “I’m glad I had that bit of time with him but it also made the situation much harder.
“They told me he had typical Edwards Syndrome so would pass away before or just after birth, my boy had a lion heart.”
“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. 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."
She added: “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 they said it would stop the pregnancy, heartbeat and everything, so we expected he wouldn’t be alive when he was born.
“They didn’t check for a heartbeat before inducing labour, and I wish they had. I don’t have words for how awful it was.”
Edwards Syndrome is a rare condition and most babies with it don’t live to full-term, or die a couple of hours after being born, because they have an extra chromosome, number 18.
The NHS website says the condition can cause a mixture of symptoms, including learning difficulties, heart, respiratory, kidney or gastrointestinal problems.
The level of illness can depend on how much of the extra chromosome patients have, and how many cells carry the copy, so there is full, mosaic or partial Edwards Syndrome.
Loran said she was told Kiyo Bleu had ‘typical Edwards Syndrome’.
Loran said: “We had already said our goodbyes when we went in on the 8th, because I’d taken the termination tablet on the sixth."
But little Kiyo Bleu Watson was born alive on April 9 at 3.50pm, weighing 150g, to the shock of his parents and doctors.
They had him blessed and christened in hospital while he was alive.
Though glad to have met him, Loran said it was agonising to wait 10 hours watching their newborn son fade until he died on April 10 at 2.30am.
After he died little Kiyo Bleu went home to be with Loran, Scott, who works as a labourer, and their other three children for four days.
The family spent time with him in a special cot with a cold mattress until he needed to go to a funeral parlour on April 14 to wait 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," she said. I can’t get my head around how he survived.
“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.
“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.
“I thought I was doing the right thing but now I think I have done the wrong thing. He just looked so normal."
East Lancashire Hospitals NHS Trust has been contacted for comment.
