Support for Samantha and Dene

This page is for anybody who would like to contribute to Sam and Dene with any costs that might be incurred following the birth of their baby. Sammy, Dene and baby's full story:

"At our 20 week anatomy scan, we discovered that our baby has a severe congenital heart defect and that we’d have to be seen at Maternal Fetal Medicine in Auckland for further scans and analysis.

At 21 weeks, our baby was officially diagnosed with Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome, an irreversible condition where the left side of the heart hasn’t fully formed. Without major heart surgery within a few days post birth (and additional surgeries at around 4 months and 4 years), she would have no chance of survival. In addition to this, she also has a blood circulation problem in her heart’s upper chambers which reduces her chance of surgery. If she did qualify for surgery, she’d have to be in NICU in Auckland Hospital for up to 6 months, robbing us of the experiences most parents have bonding, holding, breastfeeding, and raising their newborn child.

From there, we had to wait until baby was around 32-34 weeks before we could get a clearer picture of whether or not surgery would be an option for our bubs.

We finally saw the Auckland Fetal Medicine staff again to be told that unfortunately the condition hasn’t improved. We now have been told that our baby girl has less than 5% chance of surgery, due to the particularly complicated structure of her heart, and the high chance of lung disease as a result of the back pressure from the blood circulation. Even our highly talented heart surgeons here in NZ don’t see our baby as having much of a life.

Our decision from here is to have a normal birth closer to home instead of Auckland, assess her progress then, but basically plan for palliative care. We want to enjoy the short time we will have with our baby. In the meantime, our girl is very much alive and thriving in my womb... it is hard to comprehend that she isn’t compatible with the outside world."