Having Skin in the Game.

This is a phrase usually associated with betting or business.  Rarely does it actually mean 'skin', so much as a high personal stake. But today we were hearing about a different high stakes game, in the US Room. 

The game of Life itself.

Skin is our largest organ and replete with sensory neurones. A baby spends its entire existence before being born in constant contact with its mother. It is totally 'touched'. It cannot live without it and needs a 'full measure' of nine months. And we need that touch afterwards almost as much as a babe in the womb does.

We like cuddles even as adults. Particularly skin to skin. 

Let us be brief and cut right to it. 

Parents cuddled the dead body of their newborn baby

After three years of struggling to get pregnant, Kate and David Ogg were thrilled to learn they were expecting twins. But at only 26 weeks’ gestation, Kate went into preterm labor. In the video below detailing the birth she says it was the “most frightening thing” ever.

https://www.lifesitenews.com/pulse/video-shows-incredible-moment-newborn-baby-declared-dead-started-moving-as 

After giving birth, the couple learned they had both a daughter and a son, and the doctor asked them if they had a name for the boy, which they did: Jamie. Kate says:

We noticed the dynamic in the room was quite strange. 

He [the doctor] sat on the edge of the bed and said, ‘Jamie didn’t make it. We’ve lost him.’

Kate instinctively grabbed her son and put him skin to skin against her chest so he could hear her heartbeat. 

She quickly instructed David to take of his shirt and get in the bed with them so that Jamie could have as much body heat as possible. There they stayed, skin to skin, telling their son about his twin sister Emily, and asking him to look after her. They cried as they told him about the plans they had for him and about his extended family.

“And then,” says Kate. “He started to move.”

They quickly called in the midwives, who told them that Jamie was dying, and they needed to say their goodbyes.

But Jamie had other plans. The newborn lifted his head. Then he grabbed his father’s finger, and he opened his eyes. Jamie made it known to his parents and the medical team that he was most definitely alive. 

Everyone in the room was shocked and amazed at the miracle unfolding before them.

Today, Emily and Jamie are healthy five-year-old kids with a younger brother named Charlie who is almost four. Kate calls their life “bliss,” and remarks at how lucky she is to have her children, knowing how close she came to losing Jamie.

It wasn’t luck, but motherly instinct that saved Jamie’s life, and Kate continues to hold her children close just as she did on the day of their birth.

Life itself is the ultimate Skin in the Game. 

Drink to the baby and those two parents.

Pax