‘Everyone deserves a chance to survive’
How a tiny miracle baby became a high achiever. Tony Wall reports.
HAMISH MacColl used to fit inside a margarine container – now he’s a black belt in Choi Kwang-Do, top of his class and is well on his way to becoming an author.
Not bad for a boy who wasn’t expected to live. When he was born at 27 weeks’ gestation in 1999, MacColl was the smallest baby to have survived at National Women’s Hospital.
He weighed just 440g and his mother Keli Dean’s wedding ring slipped over his foot and all the way up his thigh.
‘‘He was like a baby bird that had fallen out of a nest,’’ Dean says.
‘‘Look how hideous I was,’’ says Hamish as he and his mother flick through an old photo album. ‘‘But you were so cute,’’ she says.
Hamish was in an incubator for his first six weeks and needed a respirator to breathe for about a year. His family believe his very existence may have come down to a health professional faking some numbers.
‘‘He was 400g on previous scans and they said he had to be 500g for them to... deliver him,’’ Dean explains.
‘‘I said to the sonographer, ‘do you just want to bump those numbers up a bit?’ She got him back at 512g... and they delivered him the next day at 440g.
‘‘Whether she bumped the numbers up I have no idea, but it’s all down to her,’’ says Keli.
Hamish adds, ‘‘Me being alive could completely and utterly just be because one random woman decided to have an act of kindness.’’
He is now 17, a ‘‘ridiculously short’’ 163cm and weighs 49kg. Despite ‘‘terrible’’ eyesight and problems with his fine motor skills, he achieved excellence in three subjects in NCEA level one last year, and four subjects in level two this year, as well as winning Long Bay College’s cup for excellence in geography.
He’s also just secured a rare place in an online creative writing academy. ‘‘I’m going to be a journalist. My overall goal is to become an author and be able to live off the royalties.’’
He wrote a 30,000-word story, based on England’s War of the Roses, at 12 and at 10 became a black belt in Choi Kwang-Do, CHRIS SKELTON / FAIRFAX NZ although he’s given that up to concentrate on his studies.
His mother marvels at his achievements.
‘‘He’s amazing. Hamish has got an incredible attitude to everything he does. He’s incredibly stubborn, which can make him a little difficult to live with, but if he sets his mind to something, he’s going to do it.’’
Hamish says premature babies are worth saving.
‘‘It may go through hell at the beginning, but it can very much lead a normal life.
‘‘Everybody deserves a chance to survive.’’
‘ He’s incredibly stubborn ... if he sets his mind to something, he’s going to do it.’ KELI DEAN