Our beautiful son Alfie Stephen Leadbitter was born on the 11th September 2014 in Cambridge.
He was born in a very poor condition and covered in thick black meconium. He required resuscitation at birth and was intubated. After 10 minutes the intubation was removed and he took his first breathes. Alfie was then taken to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Unfortunately over night he became extremely unwell and he was then re-intubated. Alfie had started having seizures and was placed in an induced coma and life support. During this time showed no signs of life and had almost no brain activity. The doctors and nurses were doing all they could to stop the seizures and carrying out a number of tests to find out exactly what was causing them.
When Alfie was 5 days old his seizures were beginning to stop but we received the devastating news that he had suffered a severe accute brain injury caused by lack of oxygen, just hours before birth. This brain injury was in fact so severe we were told he would not recover. Myself and Steve had to make the heart breaking decision to remove all our sons life support. To our astonishment Alfie carried on breathing all on his own. It soon became clear Alfie intended living his life and we will never give up on him again.
Alfie is now 3 years old and has been diagnosed with Severe Quadraplegic Cerebal Palsy. Nothing is easy for him and the extent of his brain damage has affected all aspects of his life. Alfie as a result suffers with a lot of muscular pain and discomfort on a daily basis and finds it very hard to relax. He has drug resistant epilepsy, Visually impaired, no use of all 4 limbs, unsafe swallow and fed through a gastrostomy tube. Unfortunately the specially adapted equipment Alfie receives from the government is just not suitable and the amount of physiotherapy Alfie is receiving is just not enough.
Please help and donate so we can get the suitable equipment and more ongoing physiotherapy he needs!