Hi Arnold, not really your sisters’ fault as such more of a quirk of nature. Your moms blood group would have been either positive or negative rhesus. Which ever your mom was, your sister would have been opposite. Not a problem with first baby until the birth of your sister. When she was born, some of her blood would have mixed with your moms’ blood and caused your mom to produce an antibody in response.
You would have had the same rhesus factor as your sister, so the antibody in your moms’ blood would have then made you ill. Had you have had the opposite rhesus factor; it would not have been a problem.
In recent years, they now test both the mother and baby’s blood for the rhesus factor and if they are opposite, they give the mother an injection of Anti D. This prevents the formation of antibody’s in the mothers.
It was picked up with my children, so mom had the Anti D and gave birth to two more kids. The condition with the mother having negative rhesus ran in her family. My grandmother would have used the term “blue Baby”
Rhesus babies are quite rare now, they occasional happen when a mother has had a miscarriage first time round, so are not normally treated with Anti D
hi mort i think this info has explained a something that was not explained to me at the time..in 1984 i gave birth to my first child...sadly still born at about 22 weeks..i was told it was just one of those unfortunate things which it may well have been..everything was a bit of a haze so it is possible i was given an anti D after the loss...i went on to have 4 more healthy children but as soon as i had given birth to them i was given an anti D injection and was told it was to stop future miscarriages... as far as i am aware i was moms first child out of 6 and i am rh negative...just found moms old national blood transfusion card which she must have had just after i was born i know this due to the change of address on the card and to be honest i had not really taken much notice of it until now and on the back it says she must not lose it and produce it should she ever need a transfusion...mom was rh posative..not sure if this explains why i lost my first but it could...i do know that mom herself had a miscarriage but it was her 3rd or 4th pregnancy..thank goodness things have moved on a lot now and we are given more information about why things happen
lyn
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