Too-Fast Ticker

My baby went into cardiac arrest at just 4 weeks old

- Claire Cathcart

I couldn’t have been more excited. It was May 2015,and I was heavily pregnant with my first baby – a boy.

My husband Neil, 42, and I had everything ready.

But a check-up revealed my baby’s heartbeat was erratic – one minute high, the next, low.

‘We need to deliver him now,’ a doctor said, inducing me.

At midnight on 23 May 2015, Jake was born at 7lb ¼oz.

After checks, a paediatric doctor explained he was fine.

The following day, as we were ready to be discharged, a doctor did a final check and Jake’s heart rhythm was erratic again.

‘We think it’s supra ventricular tachycardia,’ we were told. It’s an abnormally fast heart rate.

He was transferred to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, where his heart was scanned and a hole was found, but a doctor said it may close on its own.

Worryingly, they couldn’t regulate Jake’s heart rhythm, so he was given medication.