Blood’s the stuff of life that gave Ava chance

She thought she had months to wait until she would meet her little bundle of joy.But things moved faster than Vhari Ward imagined when she went into premature labour at 27 weeks and her daughter Ava Mae was born weighing only 2lb 8oz.

The 22-year-old from Granton today spoke of the heartache she and her partner felt as they stared helplessly into their daughter’s incubator, willing her on to gain the strength she needed to survive.

Ms Ward said: “We were allowed to just look at her, but we weren’t allowed to touch her because she was so tiny. It was a very stressful time.”

Today, Ava Mae is a healthy, happy, six-month-old who owes much of her remarkable story to a blood transfusion she received in the first six weeks of her life.

Giving her thanks to the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service for having the supplies ready to sustain her fragile baby, Ms Ward helped launch this year’s Christmas donor appeal.

Ms Ward, an advertising executive, was rushed to the Royal Infirmary in June when she began going into early labour. She said: “They tried to postpone it as long as possible, but I kept getting contractions all through the night and on the Friday morning my waters broke and I was being quite violently sick.

“They broke at 9am and she was delivered naturally at 10.01am, so it was quite a quick labour.”

Ava Mae was hurried to the special care baby unit, where Ms Ward and her boyfriend Michael Lynch spent days sitting by her incubator.

It was a blood transfusion that eventually helped Ava Mae turn the corner, her mother said.

“She was round about five-and-a-half weeks [old] and they said they’d just checked her blood to make sure that there was no infection. They noticed that her white blood cell count was quite low and wanted to give her a blood transfusion to give her the strength to fight off infections.

“She just brightened up straight away, you could just see in her eyes and her face, she was eating more and you could tell she was more determined to come home.”

The transfusion service is encouraging people to give blood this Christmas – a period where stocks can run low.

This year, its campaign aims at recruiting new donors, particularly those aged 17 to 21. The service holds recruitment drives for older school pupils and students, and over the past year has held 18 sessions in schools, universities and colleges across the Lothians.

To register as a blood donor, or to find out where your nearest donation session is, www.scotblood.co.uk