Labour-intensive little miracles

After almost dying from a ruptured ectopic pregnancy two years ago, Chimene and her husband, Freddie, celebrate the birth of their new baby girl

CRADLING HER beautiful four-month-old infant Maia in her arms, Chimene Manzi still finds it hard to believe her dream of having a healthy baby has finally been realised.

Chimene herself is very lucky to be alive after a serious complication during her first pregnancy left her in a coma fighting for her life and resulted in the loss of one of her Fallopian tubes, greatly reducing her chances of conceiving again.

The heart-warming story of Chimene and her husband, Freddie’s, struggle to have a baby features in the second episode of the new series of popular RTÉ documentary From Here to Maternity which will be screened on Sunday night on RTÉ 1 at 8.30pm.

The six-part observational documentary gives a fascinating insight into life at Cork University Maternity Hospital (CUMH), one of Ireland’s busiest maternity hospitals where more than 9,000 babies are born every year – that’s one baby, every hour of every day, 365 days of the year.

Many of the women who consultant obstetrician Prof Louise Kenny deals with are high-risk pregnancies, but she and her staff at CUMH will never forget Chimene and Freddie’s story.

Chimene, who is originally from Burundi, in Eastern Africa, was only eight weeks pregnant when she was diagnosed with the life-threatening complication of an ectopic pregnancy.

“It was a huge team effort. I think nearly every specialty at the hospital was involved in Chimene’s case, at several points we were convinced that we weren’t going to win,” Kenny recalls.

The programme follows the story of Chimene and Freddie two years later as they prepare for the birth of their long-awaited baby.

Chimene and Freddie, who is from the Congo, had been trying for a baby for a number of years before they got pregnant.

They met in Kinsale in 2003 not long after Chimene moved to Cork and were married in 2005.

The couple had been awaiting IUI (intrauterine insemination) treatment when to their delight, Chimene conceived naturally in 2009. However, eight weeks later, she was diagnosed with an ectopic pregnancy which meant the pregnancy had occurred outside the womb in one of her Fallopian tubes. A baby cannot survive an ectopic pregnancy and it is a very serious complication for the mother, particularly if the pregnancy ruptures, as in Chimene’s case.

She says: “Everything went wrong and I ended up in a coma for two weeks. I had a cardiac arrest and was in hospital for two months. I lost one of my Fallopian tubes and had to go on medication for a double clot in my lung which meant it was not safe for me to get pregnant for six months. It took me a long time to recover both physically and psychologically from the trauma, but in 2011 we felt we were ready to start trying for another baby.”

Once again while on the waiting list at CUMH for artificial insemination, Chimene got pregnant naturally. This time, her progress was very closely monitored by Kenny and her team with frequent scans and clot-preventing injections administered throughout the pregnancy.

“I had peace of mind knowing I had so much support behind me. When I was asked to do From Here to Maternity, I agreed because I thought it would help other people who are desperate to have a child and show them that there is hope,” she says.

The couple are enjoying every second of their precious new baby and would love to have more children in the future.

Chimene, who has a degree in business and tourism from Cork Institute of Technology, also hopes to further her studies and Freddie continues to work as a chef in Cork city.

Patrick White, the only male midwife at CUMH and one of only eight in the State, is back in the latest series of the documentary. The camera follows him as he takes up his position as clinical midwifery manager on one of the busiest delivery suites at CUMH. When it comes to giving birth, Patrick has seen it all.

“I often say that if men could have babies, there would be very few babies in the world,” laughs Patrick.

From Here to Maternity provides no-holds-barred footage featuring the joy of a new birth tempered with the fear and emotional drama as a new life sometimes hangs in the balance. And all in a day’s work for the highly motivated hospital team.

Produced by M3 Productions and filmed over an eight-month period with unprecedented access to the labour and neonatal wards, the series offers a unique insight into the world of the maternity ward showing that life is never more exhilarating, joyous, terrifying or unique as when it begins.