With Airline’s Aid, Young Steven, Mother to Start Soon for Australia

In a week, Diane Finlay’s long and nightmarish journey from England to Australia--with an unexpected two-month stopover in Orange County--will end.

A major airline has offered to pay the round-trip air fare from Los Angeles to Australia for a nurse to travel along with Finlay and care for her newborn son, Steven, who was supposed to have waited until his family was settled in Sydney before making his appearance.

But on Feb. 5, 10 weeks ahead of schedule, Finlay began hemorrhaging and went into labor while sleeping at an Anaheim motel. She and her husband and 3-year-old son had spent the previous day at Disneyland and were set to leave just a few hours later for Hawaii, the last stop before immigrating to Australia.

Finlay was rushed to UCI Medical Center, where doctors tried unsuccessfully to stop the labor. A few hours later, Steven was born, weighing a scant 2 pounds, 13 1/2 ounces. For the past seven weeks, he has been in and out of the neonatal intensive care unit, first suffering from respiratory problems, then from an intestinal infection. All the while, the baby’s medical bills have mounted by $1,500 a day, with no assurances that the Finlays’ insurance policy will cover them.

But Steven has rallied. On Thursday, weighing a strapping 4 pounds, 7 1/2 ounces, he was energetically protesting his hospital bath and eagerly attempting to suck his thumb as his mother held him.

He has gotten the go-ahead to leave the hospital, but even that is not a simple matter.

Worried about their escalating travel expenses--most alarmingly, Steven’s hospital bill, estimated at $90,000--Diane’s husband, David Finlay, flew on to Sydney with their other son, Michael, on March 3 to live with Diane’s family and start looking for a job.

Diane Finlay is eager to join them, but--nervous about flying unassisted with the sickly baby on the 18-hour trans-Pacific flight--she wants a nurse to accompany her.

A sleep study has shown that Steven is prone to periodic breathing lapses, nurse Susana Trudell, transport coordinator for the hospital’s infant special care unit, said Thursday. So when he is discharged, he will be hooked up to an apnea monitor--which issues an alarm when the infant stops breathing in his sleep.

Given the breathing problem, Trudell said, “It’s not unreasonable for her (Finlay) to feel a little uncomfortable about the trip.”

But the Finlays can ill-afford to purchase a nurse’s ticket. Although they purchased a Lloyd’s of London insurance policy to cover them on their England-to-Australia trip, as of Thursday there was still no word as to whether the company will pay for Steven’s hospital bill. (Lloyd’s has promised to make a decision by today, Trudell said.)

The offer of free air fare for the nurse was arranged by a person who read of the family’s plight in a Times story, Finlay said. (A spokesman for the airline confirmed the offer but requested that his company not be identified.) Finlay now is looking for a nurse who wants to make the trip, set for next Friday.

“I was so surprised,” the soft-spoken Finlay, 34, said of the airline’s offer. “I’m really grateful. I wanted a nurse to travel with me because I’m very worried about the baby. I don’t want anything to happen to him.”

Actually, Steven and his mother could have flown to Australia several weeks ago if the insurance company would have committed itself to paying the cost of a medical team to accompany the infant, Trudell said.

Working out the transport has had its share of international red tape. The hospital had to prove that the baby is an Australian citizen (although he is an American citizen by accident of his birthplace, he is also an Australian citizen because his mother is) in order to ensure that he will be provided proper medical care once he reaches Sydney. The Finlays’ medical bills will also be less troublesome then because Australia has socialized medicine, Trudell said.

That will be comforting, Finlay said, because so far, her husband, who drove a taxi in England, has had no luck finding a job in Australia.

“He’s feeling pretty low,” she said. “There are pressures from here and there, and looking after a child’s not easy.”

Finlay describes her trip from England to Australia as “a nightmare.” Before she left, she had been having a healthy, uncomplicated pregnancy, and received unconditional approval from her English doctors to travel.

But when she awoke in pain at the Anaheim motel seven weeks ago, she was bleeding profusely and knew that she and the baby were in danger. “There was blood everywhere,” she said. “I’ve never been so scared in my life.”

Still, it could have been worse. The family was supposed to have boarded the airplane just 10 hours later. “It could have happened on the plane, so I just thank God it happened the way it did, that the baby’s alive and I’m alive,” Finlay said.

And while it has been a “terrible experience,” she is touched by the outpouring of help she has received from Americans.

The motel where her family had been been staying during the Disneyland trip did not charge them for the extra days they lodged there after she was rushed to the hospital, and, she said, the manager even sent flowers. People who read of her problems have sent baby clothes, diapers and “everything to do with a baby,” she said. One person even mailed her $25.

She has been staying in San Clemente with Joyce Roberts, a teaching nurse at Saddleback College who opened her home after she heard of Finlay’s situation. And the UCI Medical Center nurses, Finlay said, have been “absolutely terrific. I’ve had so many pressures, and I was so ill for a while, and they’ve been so supportive.”