Meet the baby born without blood
You can hardly tell today, but when six-month-old Olivia Norton was born, doctors were shocked by her 'ghost white' body.
Olivia was born with a condition so rare it is likely to be written in to medical textbooks – she was born without blood.
The condition known as fetomaternal haemorrhage meant Olivia's blood ran back into her mother's system, leaving her with such a low heamoglobin count it couldn't actually be considered blood.
Doctors gave Olivia less than two hours to survive, but thanks to rapid blood transfusions, her skin returned to a normal shade of pink within hours.
Six months on, Olivia's mother Louise Bearman has spoken at her shock when she first saw her baby.
"Olivia was my first baby, so I didn't really know what to expect – but I certainly didn't think she’d be that colour", Ms Bearman told The Daily Mail.
"It was amazing when they put the blood in Olivia and she slowly turned pink. The hospital staff were amazing. They called Olivia the 'miracle baby' and said if I hadn't come in for treatment she would not have survived"
Ms Bearman says she and her partner noticed Olivia had stopped kicking six weeks before her due date.
Three days later they headed to the emergency room where doctors found Olivia's levels of heamoglobin – the the chemical which carries oxygen in red blood cells – were sitting at three instead of the usual 18.
Fetomaternal haemorrhage is found in around one every 5000 babies, and can occur spontaneously or due to trauma.
Ms Bearman is now speaking out to warn expecting mothers of the complications that can arise in any pregnancy.
'I want mums to realise how important a baby's movement is in checking they are healthy. You have to trust your maternal instinct.'
