Sometimes your whole life can be turned upside in a matter of seconds.
Landsborough mum Aiesha Anderson walked into her 28-week pregnancy scan at the Sunshine Coast University Hospital (SCUH) thinking about how she still needed to get a bassinet for the baby’s room, but she was reassured by the fact she still had three months until the expected delivery.
“It was just a normal checkup,” Aiesha said.
And then that moment that would change her family’s life in an instant.
“They said he was far too small. It was the blood flow to the cord. Something was happening that shouldn't have been happening,” she said. “They watched him super closely every day, until after a week they finally made the call that he was safer to come out than be in.”
On 17 December 2024 Lennon was delivered through an emergency C-section.
“There was 30 something people in the room. A team of eight just for him. It was absolutely crazy."
“The whole thing happened so quick. You don't have much choice, there was no going around it. It was going to happen. We just had to make it work.”
He was three months early and weighed just 934 grams, within 24 hours he had dropped to 850 grams.
Lennon was taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit where he would spend the next two months.
“Pretty crazy, he was super tiny, it was obviously terrifying. He had to have every test known to man.
"Among those were numerous blood tests which drained his tiny body and led to three transfusions in his first weeks of life - it was horrific.
“He had a blood transfusion on Christmas Day and we couldn't hold him, we couldn’t even sit in the same room.
“The third one, they asked me to hold him, and I suffered through it. It was tough.”
Seeing their newborn son who weighed less than a kilogram go through those blood transfusions is one the reasons Aiesha and her partner Bailey Sims agreed to be ambassadors for this year’s 92.7 Mix FM Give Me 5 fundraising campaign, along with their now six-month-old son Lennon and their four-year-old daughter Athea.
One of the first pieces of equipment bought with the proceeds from this year’s Give Me 5 will be a pair of CO2 monitors for the paediatric unit at SCUH.
The specialised equipment measures carbon dioxide levels without drawing blood from critically ill babies. That can save a newborn between 3-to-5 blood procedures a day – which reduces the need for blood transfusions.
One of these machines may have meant little Lennon wouldn’t have had to get a blood transfusion on Christmas Day just a week after he was born.
The medical equipment at the top of this year’s Wishlist would have also have helped young Lennon – an ultrasound for the Sunshine Coast University Hospital Paediatric Unit.
It would have meant he didn’t have to be taken out of the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit to get much needed scans.
SCUH Director of Neonatology Dr Lizelle Weber said the equipment will help keep critically ill newborn babies close to their families as they will not require retrieval to Brisbane for ultrasounds.
“About 1200 children who travel from the Sunshine Coast to Brisbane yearly for the cardiac investigations and follow up,” Dr Weber said.
“The long-term aim with getting this piece of equipment is standing up a service for those kids to be seen locally.
“The paediatric cardiac echo machine is an ultrasound that we can use, not only for cardiac investigations in children, but also for other ultrasound investigations on our wards, like cranial ultrasounds.”
The equipment will also benefit young patients with eating disorders which can affect the heart, and patients with ADHD as those medications can put stress on the heart.
Lennon is now out of hospital, but he’s not out of the woods quite yet. He’s undergone an operation for a couple of hernias and still needs oxygen for his undeveloped lungs.
His Dad Bailey said there’s still a way to go but the family is just happy Lennon is finally home, and weighing more than 5 kilograms.
“It's one of those things that you never really think it's going to happen to you, never in a million years,” he said.
“There's always going to be an asterisk against him. His lungs are under-developed, he’s got a chronic lung condition. We'll always have to be a bit more cautious of even the little things.
“I'm just glad we're on the other side, and the help we did get was fantastic.
“Anyone umming or ahhing about a donation to Wishlist, 100 per cent should get behind it.
“It’s amazing the number of people you will know that have been through something similar to us. It was a massive help to our family, and there are many other families who you probably don’t realise are in the same situation.”
92.7 MIX FM's Give Me 5 Wish List:
- A $267,000 Paediatric Cardiology Ultrasound Machine to benefit premature and seriously ill babies.
- A $18,600 Non-Invasive CO2 Monitoring Machine for critically unwell or premature newborns.
- Continuation of Dads Group at Wishlist Centre to support new dads and keep families together.
- Continuation of the Sunshine Coast Clown Doctors service.
- Continuation of the Calm Fairies service at SCUH.
- Wishlist Therapy Dogs.
- Hospital accommodation to keep families together during a health crisis.
