For many people who ask me or Jacob "what's wrong with oliver" it's so hard to begin to explain because if I'm honest I still don't understand the complexity of it all myself.
Oliver has a complex congenital heart disease specifically; pulmonary atresia, large VSD, double outlet right ventricle. All of which basically mean oxygenated blood struggles immensely to travel from his heart to his lungs and other parts of the body making it hard for him to support himself when breathing, feeding, moving ect.
Oliver was diagnosed with the condition antenatally prior to the 20 week scan. We were told by leading cardiac experts the severity of his condition lies at 9-10/10. 10 being the most severe. Complex conditions in Olivers form are very rare, however congenital heart defects themselves aren't really rare at all.
We were told his vessels in his heart were so underdeveloped that they should be measuring the width of a pen, where as his were the width of a cotton thread.
Oliver will always be classed as a 'blue baby' and his oxygen saturations will always be low for him, but each day he continues to surprise us.

On 30th May Oliver was on the list for his first heart surgery which would be in the form of a stent through his groin leaving his chest scar free, a procedure that would take roughly 4 hours. As the stent went into the body and touched his heart, Oliver went into cardiac arrest and was in arrrst for 20 minutes. He completely flat lined, surgeons pulled the emergency alarms, they used a defibrillator and massaged his heart multiple times in order for a pulse. When they found a pulse Oliver was rushed to emergency theatre where his chest was immediately cut open in order to save him. A procedure that took all in all 9 1/2 hours.

After having 4 open heart surgeries to help repair his heart and encourage development in his vessels, spending time on an ECMO bypass machine and weeks on a ventilator, Oliver is now dependent on oxygen and will be until he gets to a stage where he is able to support himself.

On the 15th June our worst nightmare came true. Consultant's and Cardiac doctors brought us into a room and said the words we never want to here ever again "we think it's time to let oliver go peacefully". Oliver wasnt making any progress and was growing weaker and sicker by the day, was agreed with the doctors to wean down all the drugs and turn off the ventilator after we'd said for the go ahead. We got Oliver baptised on his bed in ICU that very same day and didn't leave his side all night. With in 48 hours later he done a 180 spin and decided to tolerate everything and we began to see improvement, he was waking up from sedation he was looking at us, tolerating with Out life support. Our little boy was standing a chance❤️

For many people who aren't aware of the side effects of cardiac surgery one the the most common is diaphragmatic paralysis- meaning the diaphragm won't function normally therefore not allowing the lungs to correctly inflate when breathing. usually the diaphragm heals itself as it is only bruised, however Olivers was completely non working and the left side was crushing his lung, he had to go down to theatre multiple times in order to fix his problem and luckily the surgery went as planned.

The main reason I wrote this was to just make people aware of the condition he has and to make more people realise that things like this can happen to anyone. As I previously wrote there needs to be a lot more awareness surrounding congenital heart defects❤️💙