Inquest Results and Consultant Visits

If I seem a bit matter-of-fact with all this information, It is because I have to be.

25/06/2013

Because Ted died rather suddenly and there wasn't any obvious reason there had to be an inquest in to why it happened.

Part of me really wanted answers to what happened and the other part of me just wanted everyone to leave him alone. As stupid as it sounds I didn't want anyone to hurt him.

The inquest was due to be held on 7th may. 

Paddy and I decided not to go. We didn't want to relive all the details of that day. It was bad enough that he had to go without learning all of the medical things that were going wrong inside of him. I wanted to keep the ideal that he didn't feel any pain and wasn't aware of any of the hospitals at all.

The inquest was pushed back to the 24th May without our knowledge. Although we weren't planning on going I'd have thought that we should have been kept in the loop a little better.

When we heard back from the inquest the result was "Diffuse Alveolar Damage: Underlying Cause Unknown"

This is basically the alveolar (the part of your lungs that transfer oxygen into the blood stream) became so damaged that they were not working properly. This in turn would have shut down other organs. His kidneys stopped working and that caused his potassium levels to rise. This stopped his heart.
This is the physical reason for his body shutting down but not the cause of death. We still don't know why his lungs stopped working.

We weren't expecting to hear anything back at all.

Ted was born with a breathing condition that meant his blood oxygen dropped every so often. This is why I had a c-section (his oxygen levels dropped so low that had I have had a home birth like the midwife was pushing he would not have made it). We weren't made aware of this. When I gave birth he was put in an incubator but we were told that his breathing was fine even though no one ever checked this.

Through the whole process we weren't told anything that we needed to know. Because we were young parents (even though we aren't that young - plenty of people there were teenagers) I felt like we weren't given the care we needed. About 50% of the couples there were 35 and above. These couples got every little bit of help they needed and more.

When I asked for help and advice breast feeding the nurse gave me Ted and told me to just put him on my breast. Then he walked away. I asked so many times for help because I didn't know what I was doing and Ted had terrible trouble latching on and would fall asleep almost immediately.

I spoke to the midwife on the maternity ward about this who was lovely. It turned out that they had been tube feeding him before I went down to the ward to feed him. She tried her best to sort everything out for me but by this point I'd become so disheartened that I'd given up and was using the breast pump and bottle to feed him. 

Before we were discharged we were told that Ted had been completely checked over and was healthy. Obviously they would not have discharged him if there were any problems but I cant help but feel that they dropped the ball.

05/11/2013
UPDATED

I was contacted recently by my doctor. He's the best doctor. He rings every now and then if he hasn't seen me in a while to check if I'm okay. He rang me the morning of the funeral to check I was holding up.

He mentioned that he'd received a phone call from the consultant that was in charge of Ted when he was re-admitted into hospital. The consultant had asked about how we were doing and wanted to set up a meeting. He'd received paperwork back from the coroner and wanted to make sure we had all the information we needed.

So we agreed to meet him.

The inquest came back with a result of "Diffuse Alveolar Damage" which is lung damage. The consultant told us that the pathologist in charge of the postmortem had not found anything wrong with any of his organs prior to the issues he'd had in the hospital.

Essentially the reason is now "cot death" which there still isn't really a reason.

The main piece of information we took from this meeting was that it is nothing congenital. There is the same chance of this happening again with the next child but the chance is not high. It's the same as it would be for every child.