LITTLE Chloe Britton was just 10 days old when infant welfare nurse Patricia Lamb made her first house call and advised her mother Eleanor that the newborn was desperately ill.
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On Sister Lamb’s intervention, the baby was rushed from her Panmure home to Melbourne’s Royal Children’s Hospital with a rare liver condition. Nearly six years later Chloe became the Austin Hospital’s youngest liver transplant recipient.
Now, 20 years on, Chloe is the mother of a healthy 18-month- old baby boy. Her family is convinced that her survival is due to the vigilance of the woman who made the welfare of new lives her life’s work.
Long-serving former Warrnambool Shire infant welfare nurse Patricia Lamb died on November 19, aged 88.
Among the many who came to pay their respects at her funeral at Warrnambool’s Our Lady Help of Christians Church last week, were those whose lives she touched; the mothers and their babies, many of them now grandparents and parents themselves.
Chloe’s grandmother Anne Rea has no doubt that were it not for Sr Lamb, her grand-daughter’s chances of survival were slim.
“I am convinced Pat’s early assessment of Chloe’s condition saved her life,” she said. “And by doing that, she helped to create another life with Chloe’s little boy.”
Known variously as Pat or Tricia, mourners recalled a quiet, conscientious and caring woman dedicated to her work. She was also a keen card player and a founding member of the Warrnambool Bridge Club.
Born and raised at Woolsthorpe, Sr Lamb trained in nursing, midwifery and infant welfare. In 1955 she worked at Warrnambool’s St John of God Hospital for several years before becoming matron of Koroit hospital.
She took up the position of infant welfare sister in 1961, tending to thousands of newborns often spanning several generations of families, until her retirement in 1994.
Former Warrnambool Shire secretary Alan Bowes recalled “the very efficient” Sr Lamb working from the Younger Ross Infant Welfare Centre in Fairy Street, or, baby weighing scales on hand, driving to weekly clinics at the Caramut public hall or making home visits.
“She liked to have things right and if there was the slightest malfunction of the scales, I would have to get them fixed,” he said.