Miracle - Premature Baby Brought Back To Life

Sydney, Australia - 27 August 2010

An Australian mother spoke publicly on Australian TV show Today Tonight for the first time yesterday on the importance of skin-on-skin care for sick babies.

Back in March, Kate Ogg brought her premature baby boy back to life two hours after doctors at a Sydney hospital had pronounced him dead.

Having gone through three hours of labor, Mrs Ogg successfully delivered a baby girl, Emily. However, Emily's twin brother - born at 27 weeks weighing 2lb - was declared dead after doctors failed to get him to breathe.

Mrs Ogg relates how the doctor asked her if they had chosen a name for their son.

When she told him, "Jamie", he turned around carrying her son, already wrapped up and informed her, "We've lost Jamie, he didn't make it, sorry".

Those were the words no mother wants to hear. "It was the worse feeling I've ever felt," she said.

For Mrs Ogg, she was left with a few final moments to say goodbye to Jamie. She did what any mother would do, she tearfully told her lifeless son how much she loved him and cuddled him tightly, not wanting to let him go.

"I took my gown off and arranged him on my chest with his head over my arm and just held him. He wasn't moving at all and we just started talking to him". And she held and spoke to him for two hours.

"We told him what his name was and that he had a sister. We told him the things we wanted to do with him throughout his life".

Then something extraordinary happened.

Little Jamie began showing signs of life. He gasp for air. Doctors initially dismissed it as a reflex action. Mrs Ogg was not one to give up on her son that easily.

She fed him a little breast milk on her finger ... and he started breathing normally.

"A short time later he opened his eyes. It was a miracle. Then he held out his hand and grabbed my finger," she said.

Jamie opened his eyes and moved his head from side to side. The doctor just kept shaking his head in disbelief.

Her husband said, "Luckily I've got a very strong, very smart wife. She instinctively did what she did. If she hadn't done that, Jamie probably wouldn't be here."

Skin-on-skin care, also known as 'kangaroo care' technique, is being used at an increasing number of British hospitals. The technique, named after the way kangaroos hold their young in a pouch next to their bodies, allows the mother to act as a human incubator to keep babies warm, stimulated and fed.

Pre-term and low birth-weight babies treated with the skin-to-skin method have also been shown to have lower infection rates, less severe illness, improved sleep patterns and are at reduced risk of hypothermia.

Jamie is now five months old and fully recovered.

Watch the interview here.