By Steven Ertelt, LifeNews.com
Doctors told her mom that little Eliza Bellamy died in the womb. Ellen Bellamy, 31, was 8 months pregnant when doctors delivered the news. But then, Eliza was born healthy and, six months later, is doing fantastic.
These kinds of stories underscore the importance of understanding that doctors are not always right. Often time, they will tell a mother or prospective parents that their baby has some sort of severe physical or mental disability and suggest an abortion as a result. As LifeNews has chronicled countless times, parents have rejceted abortion in such scenarios and given birth to healthy babies or given birth to disabled babies they loved and were glad they had not aborted.
In this case, when mother Ellen was eight months pregnant, two doctors announced that her baby had died in the womb and would be stillborn. The news left her ‘simply devastated.’
And while carrying what she thought was a dead baby, she and her husband Chris then had to think about funeral arrangements.
Not only that, but at one point Mr Bellamy feared his wife had died as well after he saw a crash team rush into the hospital theatre where she was giving birth.
In fact, the team were on standby because – against the doctors’ expectations – Eliza had been born alive.
Despite this joyous reversal of fortune, doctors then further upset Mrs Bellamy, 31, by blaming her ‘excess stomach weight’ for their misdiagnosis.
Wexham Park Hospital in Berkshire has since apologised to the couple. The blunder occurred on a Sunday and at a time when the sonographer, an expert in doing ultrasounds, was not working.
The couple, who are both teachers and have a four-year-old daughter, Ava, said their nightmare began in November when Mrs Bellamy was admitted to hospital with heavy bleeding at 35 weeks.
Two doctors carried out scans to check the baby.
‘When doctors told us our baby wasn’t moving and there was no heartbeat, Chris and I were simply devastated,’ said Mrs Bellamy.
The couple, from Langley, Berkshire, were then forced to wait four hours preparing for the arrival of their stillborn baby until an operating theatre became free. Mrs Bellamy said: ‘I still wanted to be awake when she was born, and hold her in my arms, even if she wasn’t alive. So I opted for an epidural.
