Gabriel's Story

Gabriel Louis Cassidy Brunstrom was born in the early hours of February 15th, 2006.  His mother Tanya had spent five weeks in hospital with a condition known as placenta previa, which involves serious risks of bleeding out.  Gabriel was born by emergency C-Section during a dramatic bleeding episode in which both mother and child were in severe danger.  While Tanya was under total anaesthetic, Gabriel was incubated, having been born ten weeks prematurely and weighing around three pounds.

For Tanya and her partner Conrad, these events were frighteningly familiar.  Less than a year earlier, Tanya had gone into labour prematurely and had given birth to a ten week preemie we called Liam Theodore in a small hospital in Canada.  For two weeks, Liam had seemed to flourish.  However, he contracted the bowel destroying condition known as necrotizing enterocolitis (NEC), was rushed to a larger hospital over the border in the United States, and died in his parents’ arms within a matter of hours.

While pregnant with Gabriel, Tanya researched NEC and discovered that breast-milk fed babies have far lower rates of NEC than formula fed babies.  Although she had regularly expressed milk for Liam, the trauma of his birth had left her with a very low supply and Liam was fed formula by doctors concerned to boost his weight at all costs.  Tanya also found out about milk banks and was determined that her new baby have the opportunity to receive donor milk if she herself were again unable to provide enough breast milk.

Conrad’s first decision therefore, as soon as Gabriel was born, was to ask for donor milk to be sent from the nearest bank (in Northern Ireland).  The attending physician was (and remains) very supportive of this suggestion.  Later that day, Conrad rented a breast pump for Tanya and Gabriel was fed a mixture of Tanya’s expressed milk and donor milk.  Gabriel’s success is marked by the fact that during his time in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit, he avoided picking up a single infection and his steady and sustained progress ensured that he was able to come home with his parents after just five weeks. 

Gabriel continued to receive donor milk at home, supplemented by whatever milk Tanya was able to produce, until he was about one month corrected age.  By this time he weighed over ten pound, and the donor milk bank, with its limited supplies, needed to focus on other infants at more critical stages of development.  Such was Gabriel’s success that the three of us were invited to appear on Irish television to promote milk banking, along with the director of the Northern Irish milk bank, where Liam’s story as well as Gabriel’s was explained.  We have always made it clear that we do not claim that donor milk would have saved Liam, only that babies in Liam’s situation statistically do much better when donor milk is made available to them.  We are convinced that the best thing we can do to save other parents from ever having to hear of necrotizing enterocolitis is to promote the spread of milk banks.

After this wonderful beginning Tanya continued to give Gabriel whatever little amount of breast milk she was able to produce, supplemented with formula, until he was over two years of age.  At the time of this writing, Gabriel is almost three years old, and has yet to experience a serious illness and is tall and robust for his age.  He has an impressive vocabulary and enjoys running, playing, books, broccoli, laughing, singing, dancing, chocolate, cheese and the hugs and kisses of his friends and family.

We are forever grateful to the milk-bank donors who helped him and other babies through the first days, weeks and months of his life.