Gastro What?!

The rescan confirmed our worst fears that our baby did indeed have a problem with its stomach called Gastroschisis. 

“Gastroschisis is a condition where your baby develops a defect (hole) in the abdominal wall during development, while still inside your womb. This is usually to the right side of the umbilical cord and some of the bowel escapes through this hole and continues to develop outside your baby’s abdomen. This happens in approximately 1:7000 births. There is an increased chance that your baby will be born premature and small. The number of cases of babies born with Gastroschisis has increased dramatically in the Western world over the past decade. The cause of this is not known”.

Those few moments during the scan and when we spoke to the midwife afterwards were some of the hardest of my life.  You feel powerless, angry, confused and wanted to know why this had happened and what could be done about it. 

We were told that it wouldn't have any real affects on the pregnancy itself but would would mean serious short term problems for the baby. Straight after birth the baby would would be taken to the intensive care unit where it would be assessed and prepared for surgery within a couple of hours.  The surgeons would either be able to put the bowel back in to the stomach and close the wound or if there was not enough space in the stomach cavity the intestines would be placed in a bag or silo outside the body and gradually fed back in to the stomach over the period of around a week.  We were told that the average hospital stay for a baby with this condition was around 4-6 weeks but this could vary massively.

We took all this on board and were refered to our local specialist hospital that was St Michaels in Bristol.  In some respects this was a blessing in disguise because there are only a handful of hospitals in the country that can deal with Gastroschisis.  If we lived in Cornwall we would still have had to go to Bristol to have our baby.

The specialist was excellent and was very reassuring but we still had some very difficult decisions to make.  I couldnt bear the thought of bringing a baby in to this world that would suffer so much pain and suffering during its first few weeks and months of life.


After much soul searching and advice we decided that would would continue with the pregnancy and try to enjoy the pregnancy as much as possible.  The first couple of months were very difficult for both of us but especially Lisa as she was suffering from terrible morning sickness.  I'm still unsure as to why it is called morning sickness when poor Lisa was still throwing up well in the evenings.  Lisa to her credit was amazing, she rarely complained and still went to work every day.  One of the most challenging days was at Alessandra and David's wedding when she was feeling so ill but was not 12 weeks gone so we had to make excuses for her not drinking and running to the toilet every half hour!

The rest of the pregnancy went well albeit with lots more scans than normal to check how the baby was developing and lots of trips to Bath RUH and St Michael's in Bristol.