Our precious son Scout was born August 3rd, 2021 by emergency cesarean after a failed induction. To our shock, he was born with no heart beat. Our medical team revived him after 15 minutes of CPR and three rounds of EPI. We were quickly warned that his outcome would be unknown.
As I went to recovery, Scout went up to the NICU. Once in the NICU, he was put under cooling treatment. Although we are in a big city, our NICU was not equipped to take care of our son and he was airlifted to the Edmonton Stollery Hospital.
Here is where we got to hold Scout for the first time, where I got to touch his full head of hair , feel his soft skin and ultimately learn about his diagnosis of HIE.
Here we learned that Scout had severe HIE. This means that Scout never cried, never opened his eyes, never reacted to my voice or my touch. And as a mother, that was heart breaking. The pain you feel watching your innocent child being attached to many medical devices fighting to keep them alive is a sight I will never forget. As Scout came off the cooling and went for his MRI, his entire medical team met with us.
Our son had no brain activity.
We made the hardest choice we would ever have to make, and we let Scout live his last hours free from any medical intervention. He got to breathe his own fresh air outside the only room he had known in the NICU, and at only three days old, we said goodbye to our baby.
For families who have lost a child to HIE, please know you are not alone .
There are other families who can relate to how you feel, what you’ve gone through and know that pain.
For anybody looking to support a family who has lost a child to HIE, ask them about their child. Although our children aren’t here in the physical world with us, they are always with us!
We think about them everyday, and when you speak of those children gone too soon, we find comfort in your memories of them and hearing their names said out loud!
Sincerely,
Ashley, Scout’s Mom
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