Mother cradles baby for last time after life support is switched off... but then Amazing Grace came back to life

This picture shows the heart-breaking moment a mother believed she was cradling her baby for the last time after making the agonising decision to switch off her life support.


Emily Ashurst cradled her baby Grace close to her chest, thinking they would be her last moments together after the six-week old was struck down by meningitis.

But the baby girl stunned doctors by coming back to life after her life support machine was switched off.

Grace Vincent was given a one per cent chance of survival after being struck down with the deadly brain bug at just six weeks old.




Mother Emily Ashurst holds Grace Vincent in her arms waiting for her to pass away







The last picture: After the life support machine was switched off, Grace was expected to quietly die but survived against all odds





After four days in intensive care, her parents were told she had 'catastrophic brain damage and had no chance of living' and made the awful decision to turn off the life support machine.

But as they stood at her hospital bedside preparing for her last gasping breaths, they saw Grace beginning to breath on her own.

She has continued her miraculous recovery and today, four weeks on, she was released from hospital and taken home to Holystone, Newcastle.

Her mother, Emily Ashurst, 26, said hearing her cry for the first time in a month was 'the nicest sound in the world'.

Royal Marine father Pete Vincent, also 26, returned from Afghanistan with 45 Commando in April but said the wait to see if Grace would survive had been the hardest time of his life.


'Everything has happened so quickly but we're both so happy about Grace's recovery because it was completely unexpected,' he said.


'The decision to turn off her life support machine was based on what the doctors were telling us. The scan results were very bad so we thought it would be best for her. 'We were told she would take a few last breaths.




The day she was born: Grace with big sister Megan





'But for the next six hours she kept stopping breathing and starting again. Six months in Afghanistan was easy compared to that.' Grace was rushed into intensive care at Newcastle General Hospital on May 16 after her mother Emily noticed she was listless and struggling to breathe.

Doctors found she had contracted late onset group B streptococcus meningitis from her mother during labour.
Unable to breathe, Grace, born April 3, was placed on life support. Just days later doctors said she had less than one per cent chance of survival and suggested the machine be switched off.

But instead of fading away Grace began to breathe on her own and after a course of antibiotics has almost fully recovered. Her heart rate, temperature and blood pressure have all returned to normal and, although she has not yet regained her sight, she can now cry, hear and feel.



As a newborn baby with her proud father Pete on the day he come home from Afghanistan, and grandmother Leigh Brice





Mr Vincent said: 'It was all doom and gloom and no one thought Grace had a chance. They just didn't want to get our hopes up but we are overjoyed with what happened. 'The fact she's recovered is incredible - she's obviously a real fighter. She's defied all the odds and proved everybody wrong.

'It's been a real rollercoaster ride for Emily and me.' His wife, who works as a ward clerk at the hospital and has another daughter Megan, six, said the family were 'over the moon'.

She said: 'We were told Grace had catastrophic brain damage and had no chance of living. 'But she managed it and we are really happy and looking forward to enjoying our future as a family. Every day she is making slow progress.

'None of the doctors know what the future will hold for Grace and we are still worried for her, but also hoping things will improve.' GBS, or late onset meningitis, is present in one quarter of women of childbearing age and is passed onto one in every thousand babies during labour.

It kills one in eight affected youngsters and the family are now campaigning for a simple swab test, performed routinely in America, during pregnancy, which could prevent it.

From the Mail online.


Well, a good news story amongst all the bad things happening around us......



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A lovely, heartwarming story - I sincerely hope the brain damage is also not as bad a they predicted!

Stories like this make you wonder if, even in the 21st century, medicine is still a 'hit and miss' affair......scary!!!!