‘He’s not breathing,’ I said quietly.
My two-month old baby, Zephyr, was completely white and blood streaked down from his nose.
Without a second to spare, my friend lifted him from my arms, laid his lifeless body on the table and started performing CPR.
I was frozen, too shocked to move. As hard as my friend pumped his chest, my little baby Zephyr wouldn’t come back to life.
What had started off as a beautiful sunny autumn day turned into every parent’s nightmare.
My son Zephyr had been the happiest little boy. He was my first child, and when he was born in August, he wailed for a few seconds before settling into a content state. He was on the larger side and incredibly healthy. The first eight-and-a-half weeks of his life were blissfully happy.
He hardly ever cried, except when he was really hungry. He slept surprisingly well, was growing at a fast pace and had started smiling at everyone he met.
One day in October, my husband and I brought Zephyr along on a dog walk with our friends.
After the walk, we sat down at a nearby pub to have lunch on an outside table to make the most of the sunny day. I started breastfeeding Zephyr under my jumper and turned my focus to chatting to my friends. I hadn’t seen them in months and had lots to catch up on.
We must have been talking for a few minutes when I noticed my baby wasn’t moving. I thought he had just fallen asleep feeding, which wasn’t unusual for him. I slowly slid him out to check he was OK.
But, his face was purple and there was blood streaking out of his nose. It was the single worst moment of my life.
One of my friends is an experienced intensive care nurse and immediately took charge – she took Zephyr from me, laid him down on the table and started compressions. My other friend called 999 and brought the pub manager out for extra assistance.
The police arrived first, while my friend continued to perform CPR and my husband blew air into Zephyr’s bloody nose on the advice of the 999 control centre. I couldn’t do anything; it was like I was paralysed from shock.
After 11 minutes, the air ambulance team jumped out of the helicopter and immediately surrounded my tiny baby.
After around 40 minutes, of what is now a blur, they managed to restart Zephyr’s heart, and took him to the nearest major hospital. I couldn’t believe this was happening. I was in a state of complete shock.
As the police drove us to the hospital behind the ambulance, all I could think of was what I did wrong. ‘What could I have done differently? Why did this happen to me?’
The next 10 days were incredibly tough. Zephyr was placed in Cardiff Children’s Hospital intensive care unit, and day after day I walked past beds of sedated little children covered in wires to get to him, as his bed was at the far end of the corridor.
My husband and I spent all day with him, hardly daring to leave his side in case he worsened, and slept next door in the hospital’s accommodation.
The medical team in the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit did their absolute best to keep him alive, and we thought we saw signs of improvement. After 10 days of deep sleep, Zephyr started to wake up and turned his head around. He waved his arms up and down, then spent ages clasping my hand.
But the doctors in charge had other opinions. Zephyr’s MRI scan showed extensive brain damage, and he had limited breathing ability when they took him off the ventilator and constant seizure activity. The consultant advised us to withdraw life support as they predicted Zephyr’s brain damage was too severe to survive.
I felt numb, but not as shocked as before. In some ways I was relieved we had an answer after an agonising week of not knowing what was happening to him.
Two days later, my husband and I decided to take her advice and remove him from the ventilator. I didn’t want him to suffer anymore.
We decided to turn life support off just after midnight on November 2, 2024, so he could drift off to the stars around the same time he was born: 1.45am.
It also meant he would die on All Souls Day, so he would never really die at all: for Christians, it’s the day when the dead return to the living. He would always be with us in a way.
The medical team told us he would probably only last a few minutes off life support, a few hours at most.
But Zephyr didn’t stop breathing. Minutes off the ventilator turned into hours, and when we woke up he was still next to us, alive.
No one could believe it. His breathing, at first shallow and irregular, got stronger and stronger with each day. He was telling us he didn’t want to go yet.
Against all odds, he survived. From Cardiff, we transferred to a local hospital in Cambridge and he was discharged at the beginning of December, after over six weeks in hospital. He spent Christmas with my family, looking up at the sparkling lights and waving his arms around.
Several months later, and while he’s not the same as he used to be, it’s far too soon to know what his longer-term outlook will be.
Zephyr is now behind in his age group, but we’ve been told it’s far too early to assess what he can or can’t do and he is starting to make progress on skills like sitting. Most of the time, he seems like a normal baby, just a bit sleepier and slower.
An amazing team of physiotherapists, occupational therapists and nurses are helping him to make the most of his abilities.
I don’t know if I could ever prepare myself for what happened, as it did occur so suddenly with no pre-existing health concerns. The doctors could never explain why exactly it happened, attributing the cause to ‘accidental suffocation.’ But I will definitely be taking a course in baby and child first aid in the future.
The road to recovery will be long, yet I have faith – he’s been such a fighter so far.
I never ever imagined I would be in this situation as he was such a healthy boy at birth, but Zephyr taught me that life is incredibly unexpected and can change in the blink of an eye. I’m treasuring every moment I have with him and thankful each day he’s in my life.
Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jess.austin@metro.co.uk.
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