help! the baby's not breathing!

Today was supposed to be my half day (finishing at noon - it is the only way the rota remains legal as I will be working 52 hours (4 night shifts) over the coming weekend), but I didn't get away until 3 in the afternoon.

The labour ward bleep went off at about 11 in the morning. "Hello is that the Paed?" said the midwife. (that's what they always say - they get really confused if you answer the phone and say you are a 'Neonatal' SHO) "We are in theatre now, it's a 35-weeker with dextrocardia and situs inversus, and IUGR."
"Are you starting right now?" I asked, as they always seem to call me before the anaesthetist has even turned up to put in the spinal. "We've already started," she said. This was quite inconvenient as the baby was likely to have other congenital abnormailities and to require resuscitation, and she was only giving me 7 minutes' notice. (It usually takes 7 minutes to deliver the baby from the time of first incision at an uncomplicated caesarian section) On hindsight, I should have called the registrar first-off, but I didn't know how bad things were going to be.

I hadn't been able to find any scrubs of the right size in the morning, so it took me another 3 minutes to grab a Medium top (the smallest I could find) and to put on shoe covers and a hat. By the time I got to the theatre, I had just enough time to check the resuscitaire.
Before I knew it, a tiny, floppy bundle the shade of a blueberry had been placed before me. It was the most deformed baby I had seen in my life (believe me I have seen some freaky babies) and it was clearly hydropic. The moment I saw the baby, I asked the midwife to page the registrar immediately. I dried the baby as best I could, gave it 5 inflation breaths, and then more breaths through a facemask. The baby gasped and moved its arms, but then it stopped moving, and stopped breathing. Its heart rate slowed and it turned even bluer. The anaesthetist came over to see if he could help. I tried adjusting the mask on the baby and repositioning its head, but nothing seemed to work. One thing I should have done in retrospect is used higher pressures - something that would have been more obvious had I been ventilating the baby manually. I got the anaesthetist to give some chest compressions. I thought about intubating the baby (something I have yet to do successfully ever) or at least looking down its trachea to see if there was anything blocking the flow of air (possibly meconium or vernix). The baby had an abnormally small jaw and a tiny mouth. I had difficulty even getting the laryngoscope blade in, and when I tried to lift the scope, there was very little give in the jaw. I couldn't even see the vocal cords, but was afraid to pull any harder. So I went back to trying to ventilate the baby through the mask. At the age of 6 minutes (though it felt much longer at the time), the baby was starting to look like a specimen from the pathology museum.
Just as I thought I'd lost the baby for good, S*, my registrar turned up. He's really experienced and it took him 3 trys to intubate. As soon as the tube was in, the baby began to pink up. His heart rate picked up. He was still completely limp though.
Back at the Neonatal unit, the baby had an arterial line put in to check his blood pressure. The first attempt resulted in a wound (from a tiny needle prick) that just would not stop bleeding. The umbilical vein too, oozed for ages. I was allowed to attempt cannulation of an umbilical artery (again something I have never done before), but it was difficult, and I didn't get it in. An echocardiogram (done on the ward using the same machine I took my brain pictures with) showed that the baby's heart was contracting very poorly, and was grossly enlarged.
By then it was nearly 14:00. I headed back to the labour ward to get a full maternal and antenatal history. It turned out that the cardiac anomaly had been discovered 5 weeks ago, and that the Fetal Cardiologists at the Big University Hospital had done a scan and reassured everyone that 'cardiac function [was] normal'. They even went on to say that they planned to see the baby in their outpatient clinic at the age of 4 to 6 weeks! As things have turned out, this was a false (and arguably dangerous!) assurance. I just hope I haven't contributed significantly to the baby's (already) poor prognosis.