Meet River Hazel

River was born unexpectedly just over 10 weeks early in Sri Lanka due to her Mummy experiencing an abruption of the placenta. River weighed 3.5 pounds and was in NICU for the next month due to complex health complications including developing epilepsy and experiencing a brain bleed grade 4. At two months old and weighing 5 pounds and defying the odds, River flew home to England with her Mummy.

 

Within two weeks of coming home, River developed hydrocephalus and needed a lifelong shunt inserted into her head to save her life. In the past year she has had a number of hospital admissions, due to unexplained episodes of stopping breathing, needing a shunt revision due to it getting blocked and pneumonia to name a few reasons for her visits.

 

River lights up all those around her and anyone who meets her. She radiates love. River is growing stronger physically day by day, but due to her complex health needs and developing cerebral palsy she does regress at times, but always bounces back.

 

River needs ongoing physiotherapy sessions as regularly as possible to enable her to grow stronger and develop physically. She has learnt to roll and is working on making this a regular movement. She needs to develop her physical core to enable her to learn and develop the movements while she also needs this to enable her to sit up and work towards crawling and walking. No one is able to say at this stage in her life what affect the brain damage she has will have on her developmentally, but I know she will achieve with all the love and support she has around her and due to her own determination and motivation to live her best life.

 

Every medical professional involved in River's life, agree physio is essential for her to develop her gross motor skills, so enabling her to physically work towards meeting her physical milestones of sitting, crawling and walking.

 

River's Mum Samantha is managing alone as sadly River's daddy died aged 32 of a heart attack on the day she found out she was pregnant. Sadly, he never got to hear the wonderful news he was to become a daddy.

 

Thank you in advance for taking the time to read River's life journey to date.