Let parents decide fate of their baby


09 October 2004 12:11

A DRAYTON mum who suffered two heart attacks while giving birth to her premature daughter has spoken of her anguish at the High Court's decision to allow baby Charlotte Wyatt to die.

Janyne Durrant-Pratt, of Century Way, said her own daughter Lucie was lucky to survive the traumatic birth in March 2002.

But she added that a court's decision to allow doctors in Portsmouth not to resuscitate Charlotte, who was born three months prematurely last October, was heartbreaking.

Committed Christians Darren Wyatt, 33, and his 23-year-old pregnant wife Debbie, from Buckland, Portsmouth, were given the news they dreaded when Mr Justice Hedley gave the baby's doctors permission not to resuscitate her if breathing stops.

In a moving and compassionate ruling in London, the judge, who acknowledged he was making a "momentous" decision, said he did not believe any further aggressive treatment, even if necessary to prolong her life, was in her best interests.

But Mrs Durrant-Pratt, whose daughter Lucie has recently started at Drayton Church Nursery School, said: "I think it should be left to the parents to decide.

"If someone had tried to make that decision for me at the time I don't think I would have been able to accept it," she said.

"It would be something I would have to work through with my husband and baby. I would take medical advice, but the parents are looking at it from an emotional point of view as well as a medical one."

Mrs Durrant-Pratt, 33, who lives with husband Martin, and eight-year-old Sophie, had to have a caesarean section just hours after undergoing surgery on her dissected right coronary artery in March 2002.

This meant Lucie arrived at 29 weeks weighing just 2lbs 15oz. She has also started at Fairview nursery in Horsford.

But things could have been so much different, and Mrs Durrant-Pratt can empathise with the heart-wrenching situation the Wyatt's currently find themselves in.

"I don't think I could have taken it if someone had tried to put that decision on to me," she said. "For us everything turned out happy.

"If baby Charlotte does lose her fight that's got to be easier to deal with than knowing they didn't do anything to stop it."

Lucie is not only precious to her family but also to staff at the Papworth Hospital in Cambridgeshire where Mrs Durrant-Pratt was being treated for her heart problems.

She was the first surviving baby to be born at the specialist heart hospital and although Lucie was then transferred to the premature baby unit at Addenbrooke's she fought so hard for life that she was transferred to the Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital within days.

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