Baby On Board!

It’s always nice to hear a good news story and this one is a cracker,but with a lot of worry and heartache along the way. Pregnant Emily Morgan and her husband, Chase left their cruise holiday with a lot more baggage than they started with.

The couple from Utah were enjoying a 7 night Caribbean cruise on Royal Caribbean’s Independence of the Seas cruise in August with their 3 year old daughter when suddenly Emily started to experience pains. It quickly became apparent that they were labour pains. This was an incredible worry for the couple as their due date was not until December. Doctors had cleared her for travel expecting no complications with the pregnancy.

When medical staff on board the ship realised that Emily was in labour they tried to discourage her from pushing as they were 14 hours away from the nearest post, but as we all know there is no stopping mother nature and when it’s time for a baby to come there’s not a lot you can do.

Tiny Haiden was born weighing just one and a half pounds and initially the medical staff thought that the baby hadn’t survived the trauma of the early birth, but clearly Haiden was a fighter and despite being so tiny his Mum was relieved to hear a feeble cry from him. Luckily his lungs were relatively strong, so there was hope.

Although cruise ships have good medical facilities they certainly don’t have the specialist neo-natal medical equipment that hospitals do, so they had to set up a makeshift incubator by putting microwaved saline packets in towels to wrap round Haiden. Meanwhile the captain put his foot down and managed to shave 2 hours off the journey time to Puerto Rico.

Haiden is still obviously very fragile and is expected to be kept in hospital until his due date on the 19th of December, but is making good progress.

I’m sure you’ll join me in wishing Haiden and his family positive thoughts and best wishes for a speedy recovery.