She is a miracle - a little girls tale.

It's summer 1990, and the heat in Auckland is oppressively muggy.  This is normal for Auckland of course, but my wife is pregnant with our second child, and she is struggling.  Between February and April she sees her GP a couple of times to ensure that she and our baby are progressing well.  In April however the GP is concerned by the fluid retention and thinks my wife has toxemia, so writes a letter for us to take to National Womens Hospital so my wife can have a caesarian section.

After half a day in a bed, a registrar decides that my wife does not need an operation and sends her home to have our babe naturally.  Well things didn't go one hundred percent the way the registrar must have thought, and my wife found herself giving birth to Ashleigh in North Shore Hospital.  But she was born a Blue Baby and needed instant CPR and resuscitation by the same GP that originally told us what to do. It's fair to say the trouble started there for Ashleigh.  But we weren't to know how badly off she was until the following weeks when she would hardly breast feed, and it took over 90 minutes to get 1/3 of a bottle of formula into her.

We, but more important, my wife, were very concerned and this time visits to the GP failed to find anything out of sorts.  Then at 3 months my wife visited her local Plunket Nurse and she immediately sent us off to Princess Mary Childrens Hospital and there the journey truly began.  The details are foggy for me here as I had to go home and look after our eldest, but Ashleigh was diagnosed with pneumonia initially, and then after exhaustive testing she was found to have a neurological disorder and  a deformed Esophagus causing Reflux, which meant she couldn't eat at all. She was immediately given a nasal gastric tube and was feed formula or breast pumped milk, the way she would be fed for the next year or so.  As it was, Ashleigh stayed in hospital for 7 months and was released around Christmas time, only to end up back in hospital again.

During this stay, she was given her Whoughing Cough vaccine and immediately new issues lept into focus.  She started having breathing issues (hence an apnea monitor in her bed) and also signs of petite marl, a sign that she now had to be treated for Epilepsy.  Yep, all this before she was one.  She only started putting on weight after leaving hospital (we were basically told that we were taking her home to die, and the most they could give us was she wouldn't live past seven).  Between 1991 and 1994 Ashleigh stopped breathing several times, and then one day the inevitable nearly happened.  At age four, a young girl that had survived so much, and who had never shown any inclination to climb anything, climbed up the bench, opened the top medicine cupboard, and took copious amounts of medicines, both her own, and her mothers.  I was away with the Navy and was rung up on the boat to say Ashleigh was in hospital and why she was, and my Boss deemed a matter of urgency to get me back to Auckland and see Ashleigh.  I was hoping for the best and anyone that could listen was asked to help.  I got to the hospital room where Ashleigh, my wife, my daughter, and my father in law were waiting for the best but worried about the worst.  It seemed those earlier doctors were right, but as soon as I walked in the room, she opened her eyes and smiled.

Today Ashleigh is a special needs young adult.  Her epilepsy is under control, she eats a lot of pasta, and she turned 21 today.  My special thanks go to Dr Hu for the initial assessment to get my wife into hospital and to Professor Costello for working harder than anyone at Princess Mary Hospital to ensure Ashleigh thrived.  To the registrar at National Womens Hospital, and the unknown doctor that told us she wouldn't make seven, Thank you .

Adding on 12/6/2019

I love my little girl and wish I could do more but am very proud to be her father.  Last May 8th she had her 29th birthday.  AND she has done things I would never get around to - 3 tattoo's . Goth Baby!!