Honour of our son Presley

From what we thought was a normal healthy pregnancy, our whole world got turned upside down when our perfect little boy got taken to intensive care

On the 14th of June 2023, I was booked in for an elective cesarean section. At 10:27am we welcomed our healthy perfect baby boy weighing a lovely 9 pounds 5 ounces. He needed a little bit of help to get him to cry from the initial shock. We got taken into the recovery room where we thought we would be soaking up all the cuddles from our beautiful baby boy and hopefully be getting ready to be discharged to be home with his big sister. But we noticed he was breathing a bit faster than usual, he was turning blue and he wasn’t feeding. The nurses and midwives at our local hospital reassured us that everything was fine with him. Later on that day, they took him to the neonatal unit to give Presley a bit of oxygen, as his levels was slightly low. Which we then knew something was seriously wrong. Within an hour he stopped breathing by himself, he required to be put on a ventilator machine, and various medicines to keep him alive. He was then transferred to another hospital as he needed nitric gas. And within a few hours of being admitted to another hospital, they did a cardiac scan ( heart ) which they noticed was abnormal and his lung had collapsed , although the hospital he was born at did two scans on his heart and come back as ‘ perfectly fine‘.

On the 16th of June, early hours in the morning he got transferred to Evelina hospital in an intensive care ambulance. And within two hours of Presley being admitted, they diagnosed him with a complex heart condition called ‘ supracardiac total anomalous pulmonary venous drainage ‘ . This is a condition where the blood vessels from the lungs take an abnormal path back to the heart. The surgeon told us if he didn’t get rushed down for surgery, he wouldn’t have survived. We had to sign a consent form and we didn’t have time to prepare ourselves for what our tiny baby or us as a family was about to go through.

Presley underwent open heart surgery at just two days old to save his life. After the longest 6 hours of our lives, Presley was finally out of surgery. And it was a success . It was a long road for recovery. Presley struggled for the first part of his recovery, as the surgeons told us he spent most of his surgery on the bypass machine. Us as parents had never felt this pain before. But day by day we saw tiny steps which got our hopes up. He spent just over two weeks in Paediatric intensive care unit ( PICU).

He is currently recovering on the Sky Cardiac ward, where he is being fed through a tube and hopefully he starts to put some weight on for his next surgery that he needs. And soon he will be getting ready to go home and spend some much needed family time with his big sister!

We got told the worse news any parents could ever imagine. But if it wasn’t for the nurses and doctors at the Evelina hospital, our son wouldn’t be here today. There isn’t enough words to say how greatful we are. We have had amazing support from family. Our other baby has been coming to visit. Giving her brother lots of attention

We have built such a lovely bond with the people caring for our son which made me and his dad more relaxed. We want to say a massive thank you to the cardiologists, surgical team and all of the lovely nurses on PICU and the Sky cardiac ward☁️. Thank you again.

You haven’t just saved our sons heart, you’ve saved all of our hearts❤️