New mum's horror as son started vomiting blood 'out of nowhere'

A mother feared her newborn would die after he began vomiting blood in a case doctors had "not seen in a newborn" before. Kate Clifford, 37, a financial controller from Sunderland, experienced a "textbook" pregnancy and delivery with her second son Blake in March.

However, shortly after birth, he started having difficulty breathing and required ventilation for 24 hours. After being taken off the ventilator, Kate breastfed him, but he suddenly began vomiting blood and bleeding from his bottom, leading to an emergency blood transfusion and transfer to Royal Victoria Infirmary (RVI) in Newcastle for specialist care.

Doctors initially struggled to identify the cause, telling Kate "they’d not seen it before in a newborn" due to the volume of blood. She feared Blake would "bleed out" in hospital, but it was later discovered he had stomach ulcers causing the bleeding.

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Kate praised the "amazing" hospital staff who administered medication to reduce the ulcers and gastritis, inflammation of the stomach lining, and inserted a feeding tube directly into his bowel to prevent the condition from worsening. Now discharged, eight-month-old Blake is thriving, and Kate is looking forward his first Christmas with her other son, Nolan, five.

Kate shared with PA Real Life: "Honestly, for the first two-and-a-half weeks he was there, I was convinced he was going to die.

"Doctors said they’d seen small amounts of bleeding in newborns, but not to the level that Blake was.

"They were saying, ‘It’s okay, we’ll give him more blood’, but I just thought, ‘How long can you just keep giving somebody blood? Why is he bleeding? What’s wrong?’

"Nobody could tell me what was wrong at first, nobody had any experience of it, so to be just stood there and told, ‘Well, we’ve not seen it before’ – and these are the specialists – I still sometimes can’t believe he’s at home with us."

Kate's pregnancy with Blake had been uneventful, and she gave birth on March 28, a day before his due date. However, shortly after birth, doctors noticed Blake had cyanosis - a condition where the skin or lips turn blue or grey - and was struggling to breathe, requiring him to be placed on a ventilator for 24 hours.

Kate said she started to breastfeed him after he came off the ventilator, but “out of nowhere”, he suddenly started vomiting blood – which was "incredibly alarming" for her and Blake’s father Carl, 33.

“He was just super fussy, and I couldn’t get him to take another feed,” she said.

“I had hold of him in my arms and he just vomited all this blood.

"It was coming out of his nose, it was just everywhere, so there was a mad rush of doctors and there were another two bouts of him bringing up the blood within 20 minutes."

She described how Blake turned a "pale yellow lemon" colour and urgently required a blood transfusion before being rushed to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the RVI.

Kate said that he was fed through a nasogastric tube and had additional tubes inserted to drain and "top up" his blood levels. "They didn’t know what was causing the blood. He was still losing it, he was spitting up, it was coming out of his bum," she added.

The situation was dire as "the blood kept coming up and they were draining it, so he had a constant bag of blood coming out of him."

Vigilant medical staff replenished Blake's blood as needed and closely monitored him due to concerns that surgery might lead to him bleeding out. Despite initial thoughts that he might have swallowed something causing the bleed, this theory was dismissed after X-rays and scans came back clear.

At nine days old, he underwent a procedure involving a scope down his throat to identify the cause of the bleeding. "They said they’d not seen it before in a newborn," Kate said.

"They were just trying everything they could, without fully opening him up.

"Had they found anything, they would have then had to cut him, hip to hip, which was major surgery... but we were extremely lucky because when they got in there with the scope, they could see all the ulcers."

Kate revealed that it was discovered the bleeding was coming from two large ulcers in his stomach, caused by gastritis. Blake had required four blood transfusions up to this point – and although she admitted the diagnosis was a shock and the paediatric gastroenterologist told her he had "never seen ulcers in a newborn", she felt "massive relief".

During Blake’s admission, Kate said the hospital staff were “phenomenal” and they arranged for her to stay at Crawford House, a “Home from Home” run by The Sick Children’s Trust charity.

This meant her other son Nolan could join her, and they were just minutes from Blake’s bedside, taking “all the stress away”.

“When your baby is poorly and you don’t know why, and you don’t know if he’s going to die or if he’s just going to bleed out, I just thought, I need to be there (with him), I can’t let him die on his own,” Kate said.

"So being there at Crawford House, I don’t think I realised what they did for us until afterwards – they provided so much support."

The doctors conducted biopsies for further testing, administered medication to Blake to reduce the gastritis and ulcers, and inserted a feeding tube directly into his bowel to avoid "aggravating" the condition.

The scope was re-inserted during a second procedure, revealing the inflammation had reduced, and Blake was then transferred back to Sunderland for an extra day before being discharged. After continuing to take medication at home, Blake is now full of energy and "flying through life", and he and his brother Nolan are best friends.

The family are excited for Christmas and have even decorated two out of three trees. Kate said her experience with Blake has encouraged her to focus on the "simple things" in life. "Day to day, you’re just so busy, and then it’s in those moments of reflection where you just think, ‘How did I get so lucky? ’ I’m just so blessed," Kate said.

"It still feels so surreal and I’m lucky to have this outcome when so many don’t – and that’s something I don’t take for granted. Blake just takes everything in his stride."

To find out more about The Sick Children’s Trust, click here.