A woman who decided to have her tubes tied after giving birth has revealed her heartbreak – after her daughter died just two months after being born.
Katherine Lawson decided to have her tubes tied at the same time as her caesarean section, because her family with partner Ben Toomey, 31, was finally complete.
But after baby Imogen was born, she became very unwell and died just two and a half months later, leaving her parents without the third child they so desperately wanted.
Mother Katherine told Kidspot of her overwhelming regret regarding the procedure.
“Her scores were all perfect but then she began having a little trouble breathing,” she explained.
“We were told there was nothing to worry about but they were taking her upstairs.”
Despite this, Katherine then went through her planned tubal ligation, as doctors worked on her baby in the same hospital.
Hours later, parents Katherine and Ben still hadn’t heard anything about their baby daughter.
It was then that they were told little Imogen has been incubated, as both of her lungs had collapsed. She then had to be transported to another hospital which had a Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
Tests revealed that Imogen had pulmonary hypertension – a common condition in new babies, but her condition continued to fluctuate.
“It was horrendous, it took us back to worse than day one,” Katherine explained. “We were losing her, then she would come back, then we’d lose her, and she’d come back again.”
Tragically, Imogen passed away in May, at the age of just two and a half months. Her cause of death is still unknown.
“Some days I desperately want another baby,” says Katherine, who had the added heartache of the tubal ligation on top of her tragic loss.
“But then I think, ‘what if it happens again?’ But our bodies are healthy. Our doctors said we had more chance winning the lottery then Imogen dying the way she did.”
Now the couple are looking at going through IVF to have another child, after discovering a reversal to the tube tie procedure would cost even more than fertility treatment.
Katherine is now warning other parents not to do something so permanent without thinking things through, as “life is a blessing, not a given.”