A mother in Australia whose premature newborn was pronounced dead said she stirred him back to life by using a method known as "kangaroo care."
Kate Ogg was told her son, Jamie, had died after efforts to resuscitate him failed shortly after his birth. But when doctors placed the baby across his mother's bare chest so his parents could say goodbye, Kate Ogg and her husband, David, said he began showing signs of life.
After five minutes, Jamie began displaying short, startled movements. As his parents looked on, the baby's movements became more pronounced.
Doctors maintained the movements were purely reflex, but two hours later, Jamie opened his eyes.
“We thought, ‘What a blessing, we get to see his eyes before he passes away,’ ” Kate Ogg said Friday on NBC's "Today" show. “But they stayed open.”
The couple was practicing what Australians call “kangaroo care," in which an infant is held skin-to-skin to their mother or father, generating heat for the newborn much like a baby kangaroo receives in its mother’s pouch.
Jamie continued to come around as he lay across Kate’s chest, grabbing at his parents' fingers. And when Kate Ogg put a dab of breast milk on her finger, Jamie eagerly accepted it.
“We thought, ‘He’s getting stronger -- he’s not dead,’ ” Kate Ogg said.
The skeptical doctor wouldn't return to their bedside until they asked him to explain the death further.
Kate Ogg told the London Daily Mail the doctor was in disbelief when he arrived back at the bedside.
“He got a stethoscope, listened to Jamie’s chest and just kept shaking his head," she said. "He said, ‘I don’t believe it, I don’t believe it.’”
Jamie and his twin sister, Emily, are now healthy 5-month-olds.
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