Treatment a success for young mother

Press, 17 August 1983, Page 21

Treatment a success for young mother

PA Auckland Mrs Jacqui Culpin, a young Glen Eden mother, told yesterday how the medical breakthrough of Professor Liggins and an associate professor, Dr Lubbe, turned the tragedy of a miscarriage into the fulfillment of parenthood.

Mrs Jacqui Culpin of Glen Eden said yesterday that her daughter, Angela, born last January, was the fourth child in the world to have been saved by the new treatment.

Mrs Culpin, a lupus sufferer, had lost her first baby at 29 weeks.

“I was in National Women’s at the time because of my high blood pressure. The doctors began cortisone treatment alone when I was 18 weeks pregnant. “I had ultrasound scans the day before the baby died and everything was fine. The next day, I told the doctors that I hadn’t felt the baby moving much during the night, and the ultrasound confirmed it had died—just like that.” Mrs Culpin said the worst

part of the pregnancy was waiting to deliver the child she knew had already died.

She went into labour two days after the baby died. A post-mortem examination showed the dead baby was completely normal. When she became pregnant again, last year, she was teated with cortisone and aspirin, and the clotting of her blood was regularly monitored.

Mrs Culpin and her husband, Andrew, said doctors told them Mrs Culpin might never be well enough to have a child because of the lupus. She suffered kidney problems, and must still take cortisone when her condition flares.

The couple have thanked National Women’s staff for allowing them to have Angela, who was bom six weeks premature and weighed in at only 1805 grams. “If it wasn’t for Professor Liggins and Professor Lubbe, we wouldn’t have made it. They are just so dedicated and always so cheerful. They gave us the confidence to get through it,” Mrs Culpin said.