Sunderland mum feared baby would 'bleed out' when mystery illness baffled doctors, but now he's set for first Christmas

A Sunderland baby whose mum feared he would "bleed out" in hospital due to a condition that initially mystified doctors is now preparing for his first Christmas.

Mum Kate Clifford, 37, said when little Blake began vomiting blood and bleeding from his bottom - and doctors didn't understand what was happening to him - she was convinced the tot would die. She and Blake's dad Carl, 33, were told medics had simply not seen that level of bleeding in a newborn.

Fortunately, doctors discovered it was caused by ulcers in his stomach and we able to treat the issue. Blake is now eight months old and the family, including big brother Nolan, 5, are looking forward to his first Christmas.

Kate said: "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."

There had been no signs of anything untoward during a "textbook" pregnancy, Kate said, and Blake was born a day early on March 28 this year, at Sunderland Royal Hospital. But doctors soon noticed issues including cyanosis and that Blake was struggling to breathe. The former condition means his skin and lips were blue or grey.

He was placed on a ventilator for 24 hours - but then the bleeding began. Kate added: "He was just super fussy, and I couldn’t get him to take another feed. 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.”

Kate said Blake turned a “pale yellow lemon” colour and needed an emergency blood transfusion before being blue-lighted to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) at the RVI in Newcastle.

Blake was fed through a nasogastric tube and had another two tubes inserted into his body 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,” Kate said.

"The blood kept coming up and they were draining it, so he had a constant bag of blood coming out of him. They were topping his blood levels back up as and when he needed it and monitoring him because, the concern was, if they took him in for surgery, whatever was causing that bleed, he could bleed out."

X-rays and scans came back clear, while a theory that Blake has swallowed something which was causing the bleeding was ruled out too.

"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."

There were two of them in his stomach, caused by a condition called gastritis. The tot's medic said they had "never seen ulcers in a newborn" like this.

The family were looked after during their traumatic time by the Sick Children's Trust charity - which arranged for them all to stay at Crawford House, accommodation the charity runs on the hospital grounds and which meant the family, including Nolan, were able to stay together just minutes from Blake's bedside.

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

After continuing to take medication at home, Blake is now full of energy and “flying through life”, his mum said. She explained the family are excited for Christmas ahead and have even decorated two out of three trees, and 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, visit: sickchildrenstrust.org.