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Every mum longs to hear her newborn baby’s first cry. But the birth of Michelle Kee’s firstborn, Vera, was met with a deafening silence.
“My baby didn’t even cry when the doctor tried giving her oxygen to help her breathe. I noticed her skin was all blue [from the lack of oxygen],” shares the first-time mother, 30, a nurse.
Having breathed in some meconium before birth, Vera was whisked away to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) even before Michelle could hold her.
Meconium is the sticky greenish black stool that a newborn baby first passes after birth. The faeces had entered Vera’s airways and lungs.
Most babies pass their first stool in the first 24 hours after delivery, says Dr Joseph Manuel Gomez, head and senior consultant at NICU at KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital.
But some babies who experience stress before or during birth may pass meconium into the amniotic fluid before they are born, he adds.
Amniotic fluid is the clear, colourless liquid surrounding the baby in the womb.
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