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A miracle transplant has given a little boy born with only half a heart a second chance of life, ELIZABETH ARCHER reports

THIS Christmas Day, like many parents,Anouska and Chris Wardale will help their two-year-old son Reggie unwrap his presents. But this year, the Wardales will have more reason to celebrate than most.

In November their son Reggie, who was born with half a heart, was hours from death when the family heard a transplant had become available.

Now, they’ve been given the best Christmas present they could imagine: their son is healthy and recovering well.

“We’re celebrating every day, because each day is one we didn’t think we’d have with Reggie,” says Anouska, 26, from Kirkby Stephen, Cumbria.

Before Reggie came along, the couple longed for a baby, but struggled to conceive. So when Anouska fell pregnant in March 2017 they were over the moon.

“We couldn’t believe it was happening,” says Anouska, who worked in a cafe at the time.

Then, at their 20-week scan at their local hospital, they were dealt a devastating blow. The sonogram showed there was something wrong with the baby’s heart.

They were referred to the Royal Victoria Infirmary in Newcastle – two hours’ drive away – for a more in-depth foetal scan.They were told their baby had hypoplastic left heart syndrome – a rare congenital heart defect meaning his heart was undeveloped.

Only 250 babies a year in the UK are born with the condition.

TheWardales were told that little Reggie would need a series of open heart surgeries, and would eventually need a heart transplant.

“We were devastated,” says Anouska.

DOCTORS gave the couple three options: they could carry on with the pregnancy and surgeries to give him the best chance at life, they could choose to terminate the pregnancy or refuse medical intervention when he was born. But for the Wardales, there was only one option.

“Although it’s a very rare condition, the doctors told us that they see a lot of children with hypoplastic left heart syndrome in that hospital, and that gave us comfort.

“It was never really a choice – we just knew we didn’t want to terminate.We wanted to give the baby a chance to live,” says Anouska.

At 39 weeks pregnant,Anouska was induced and Reggie was rushed to the nearby Freeman Hospital, also in Newcastle, for his first open heart surgery.

“We were in bits. It was very tough,” she says.The following morning, before his surgery, Anouska and Chris held their baby for the first time.

“It was an amazing feeling, but it was tinged with sadness knowing he would soon go into surgery,” says Anouska.

When he was two days old, Reggie had an operation called the Norwood procedure, which helps get blood from the heart to the rest of the body and ensures blood flow from the heart to the lungs.

The procedure was a success and just three weeks later Reggie was discharged to be monitored closely at home.

He was fed through an nasogastric tube every three hours. “We’d take it in turns to do the feeds, so we both had at least six hours’ sleep,” says Anouska.

As the weeks rolled into months,

Reggie seemed to be progressing well, but when he was a few months old, his blood oxygen levels dropped to dangerous levels and he was rushed back to hospital.

In April 2018, at five months old, Reggie had another open-heart surgery to repair a leaky valve in his heart and spent 10 weeks in a high dependency unit.

By January 2019, he was well enough for the second operation to repair his heart – the Glenn procedure, which diverts blood from the upper body straight to the lungs, meaning it can pick up oxygen without going through the heart.

Although the operation went well, doctors found Reggie’s leaky valve, which had been repaired in April, was leaking again and he