Hero grandmother: Blood donor has special antibody used to make medication for pregnant women

PAULINE Smit is the lifesaving grandmother who has plasma so precious that it has helped more than 2500 pregnant women.

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PAULINE Smit is the lifesaving grandmother who has helped more than 2500 pregnant women.

Almost every fortnight for 19 years the grandmother has rolled up her sleeve and sat back while a few hundred millilitres of blood is drained from her body.

It’s the plasma they want, the straw-coloured liquid that’s left behind when all the other components of the blood, like the red blood cells, are separated out.

While this part of our blood is always highly prized, the 73-year-old’s plasma is so precious staff at the collection centre joke that dropping a bag of it is a sackable offence.

For Mrs Smit is one of just 200 Australian donors with blood containing a special antibody that’s used to make a medication for pregnant women.

When a mother and baby have clashing positive and negative blood types, the woman’s body creates antibodies to attack the unborn baby.

Pauline Smit with Steph Hegerty and son Harvey. Picture: Jason Edwards

Anti-D medication tricks the body into thinking it has already made these substances, preventing the deadly reaction known as Haemolytic Disease of the Newborn (HDN).

It’s helped two million Australian women since it was invented 50 years ago.

Mrs Smit’s blood donations alone is estimated to have helped more than 2,500 pregnant women.

Mothers like Steph Hegerty.

Until last week the two Victorian women had never met. They share the same sorrow that comes from losing a baby before it has the chance to be born and the elation of becoming a mother.

Three of Mrs Smit’s babies died from HDN. She went on to be a mother to three children and has since helped many strangers start their families.

“It’s wonderful,” she said. “I love the fact that my blood is now used to prevent babies dying in utero, like my babies did.”

Three years ago Mrs Hegerty had a miscarriage and was given her first injection of the Anti-D medication to protect future pregnancies.

Pauline Smit with Steph Hegerty and son Harvey. Picture: Jason Edwards

It also helped her when she was pregnant with Harvey, now 23-months-old. Within days she will give birth to her second baby.

“It’s easy to get swept up during pregnancy with having this test, scan or medication,” Mrs Hegerty said.

“But when you realise that medication you are receiving is actually derived from someone else’s blood, it’s pretty overwhelming.

“I can’t speak more highly of people who donate blood, but particularly for someone like Pauline who has been through the heartache of losing babies.

“The fact that she is just so unbelievably willing and able to give so much of her time and body so other families don’t have to go through that, there’s no other words for it other than to say she’s a super woman.”

That’s certainly not a term Mrs Smit would willingly embrace.

She didn’t donate every fortnight, she insists, there was that time she broke her shoulder.

“It’s not just me there are others,” she said. “And really, it’s not a great hardship.

“You go into the blood bank, you lie back and they stick the line in and you can have a read or have a snooze if you want to.”

A Red Cross Blood Service spokeswoman said not everyone’s blood can be used to make the medication, but every plasma donation makes 18 lifesaving treatments.

— To donate: 13 14 95 or www.donateblood.com.au.

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