Dana’s Story

I am a carrier of Severe haemophilia A and have mild haemophilia myself, we live in Guernsey, Channel Islands. During the beginning of lockdown 2020 we found out I was pregnant, it had always been planned that when I got pregnant I would go over to Southampton General to see my consultant and make a birth plan and likely have the baby in the UK, however due to COVID-19, we couldn’t travel out of the island so a local obstetrician took me under his wing and worked with Southampton to put a birth plan in place.

Our lockdown in Guernsey lifted in June 2020 and we went back to normal life here but still couldn’t go to Southampton. The rest of my pregnancy went well and in November, with the knowledge that we were having a boy and he was going to be big, we opted for a c-section.

I had my DDAVP injections and successfully delivered our little boy on 24 November via section, I lost a little more blood than usual and was a bit poorly due to sodium levels dropping but our little man was perfect and weighed in at 9lbs 9oz.

Jasper has severe haemophilia which we fully expected as a lot more of the men in my family have it than don’t, he also has tongue tie which has had to be left as it is. He is under a local paediatric specialist who is in contact with Southampton until we can get over with him and hopefully start him on prophylactic treatment!

Our second lockdown hit on 23rd January and a week in I managed to drop my son on his head so we rushed him to A&E as a precaution, I had to go in alone with him while my partner anxiously waited in the car, he was fortunately fine and with guidance from Southampton he had his first dose of factor 8 and we spent the night on the children’s ward.

He went home with tranexamic acid and was thankfully fine but the whole experience was pretty rough on my partner who couldn’t see him until he came home the next day. He had his first proper bruise on 16 March on his elbow from bumping it whilst playing. We are coming out of our lockdown again on 22 March but unfortunately still can’t get to the hospital until the situation in the UK improves and it is deemed safe to travel.

Dana, Jasper’s mum