Parents who were told to ‘say their goodbyes’ to newborn with FOUR heart conditions say she’s a ‘fighter’

The parents of an eight-week-old baby born with four complex heart conditions say she’s a ‘fighter’ proving everyone wrong. Haydn Meecham and Sabrina Gallagher were told they could terminate their pregnancy after discovering problems with their daughter Freya’s heart at the 20-week scan.

She was rushed to Alder Hey Children’s Hospital within 24 hours of being born prematurely at Royal Bolton Hospital, with her parents told to ‘say their goodbyes’ as their newborn was not expected to live. The family are now preparing to bring Freya back home.

But having been unable to feed without a tube or make a crying sound, Freya’s loving parents will need to give their daughter specialist care. “She keeps proving them all wrong,” said dad Haydn, from Radcliffe

Haydn, 31, said: “From there they said we had three options – wait and see if it sorts itself, come back in eight weeks for another scan or we could terminate. By that time we knew who she was, we couldn’t even think of that third option.”

The couple decided to wait eight weeks for their next scan, but were in and out of hospital every week. They discovered the umbilical cord was not working properly, which led to pre-eclampsia – a condition that can lead to complications in the pregnancy – and Freya had to be born early at 34 weeks.

Freya had also not been feeding properly due to the umbilical cord issue, and she was born weighing just just 3.5lbs. She was intubated after being taken to Alder Hey.

Haydn said: “They rang us on the first day she was born and said ‘would you like to say your goodbyes because there’s a possibility she won’t make it.” Freya was born with four heart conditions, with one being a hole in her heart.

Her condition began to deteriorate at hospital due to cardiac failure, while her lungs and kidneys began to fail. On March 6, she was given open heart surgery despite being below the recommended weight, because doctors believed it was too risky to weight for Freya to grow.

Mum Sabrina, 26, said: “To be honest, it’s been a bloody nightmare. We’ve had to sit and watch a tiny baby deteriorate and just get worse.”

Following her intubation, Freya’s voice box has been damaged, leaving her unable to cry – while medics fear she may be non-verbal. Freya is also nil by mouth, with the risk of food entering her lungs, so Haydn and Sabrina have been trained to feed her.

Haydn said: “We’ve had the training on her feeding tube, how to do her medication, we know to keep her on an angle. When she cries we can’t hear her cry or laugh, we have to get a heart monitor to let us know when she’s crying. It’s going to take a lot of care.”

While the couple have been at Alder Hey with Freya, their older children – nine-year-old TJ and four-year-old Nova – have been looked after by family back in Farnworth, who Haydn and Sabrina have described as ‘heroes’. The family have had to sort a new home with Bolton Council and have been unable to bring their new daughter home until it is ready.

They now need to buy specialist equipment to care for little Freya, which is an added expense for their family while facing other bills, and after Royal Mail worker Haydn has been off work since her birth. He said: “We knew about it thought we could prepare ourselves, but we couldn’t prepare ourselves for it.

“There are that many ups and downs, every day you have to take the wins when they come. I wouldn’t wish this on anyone. We couldn’t even touch our own daughter in case she got poorly.”

Sabrina added: “We’ve got the other two kids begging us to come home, they want their mum and dad, they want the family back together again. It’s been horrible, it’s the worst experience I’ve ever had to go through in my life.”