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Sam's Story
Hi, my name is Lisa Tylutki, here’s my experience.
Mark and I were married nearly eight years ago and started trying to have baby just before our first anniversary. I fell pregnant almost immediately, but by a cruel twist of fate, it wasn’t meant to be. In fact, I had two further miscarriages (including twin girls at 20½ weeks) before Samuel arrived by emergency caesarean at Calvary just after 1:30pm on 6th January 2006. Even at four weeks early, Sam was a healthy 3750grams, but from the outset, the pediatrician noticed he was having trouble breathing.
So whilst I was being attended to, Samuel was taken to the Special Care Nursery for further assessment. The rest is all a bit of a blur. I was so ill that I was having difficulty taking it all in. On returning to the maternity ward, I was informed that Samuel had a severe cleft palette (no hard or soft palette at all!) and a very small bottom jaw. As a consequence, he was constantly blocking his airway and with the presence of early delivery lung complications, he wasn’t a well baby. He needed to be transferred to NICU at RHH and the transport team were on their way to collect him, NOW!
To cut a very long story short, he spent the next 5½ weeks in NICU or Special Care until we got the feeding down pat and on 14th February, we got to take our precious gift home. The next day, it was back into town to see Dr Frank Kimble for a further assessment. Imagine our pleasure when we were told that Samuel had grown so much tissue that it would be a very straightforward repair. So at exactly 6 months, that’s what happened and he’s never looked back.
He now has the speech patterns of a normal, healthy 3½ year old and the attitude to go with it. We’re so proud of our boy and grateful to everyone we had contact with in those first few months for their support, friendship and knowledge.
View Sam's Photo Gallery here!
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