Little Ollie’s so jolly after winning his fight for life
LITTLE Ollie Mellon was saved with a high-tech artificial lung – after his own lungs were crushed when he was born with all of his abdominal organs in his chest. Without the stateof-the art technology, he would not have lived to reach two days old. His mother Lauren McGill, 27, now believes his first kick from inside the womb was him telling her he was worth fighting for. For just a day after feeling her unborn baby move, the young mother was told at her routine 20-week scan that Ollie’s stomach and intestines were squashing his tiny heart and lungs. One doctor told her it would have been “easier to tell you if there was no heartbeat, then you wouldn’t have to make a decision”. But despite every one of his abdominal organs, including his liver, spleen, and kidneys, being in the wrong place at birth, Lauren knows she was right not to give up on her now healthy one-year-old. Her message to other families facing the same plight now is to “have hope and faith – these babies are just incredible and fight against all odds. “Ollie is proof of that. He surprised everyone.”
The tot had congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH), a rare anomaly that affects an average of just three babies in Scotland a year.
Ollie was so ill, it took 20 doctors and nurses to deliver him safely at Glasgow’s Queen Elizabeth University Hospital on September 18, 2020.
He was immediately hooked up to full-life support, as his initial breath could have crushed his lungs further.
But his oxygen levels continued to plummet and doctors used a high-tech artificial lung in a last-ditch attempt to keep him alive.
Devastated Lauren and partner Cory Mellon, 28, from Alloa, were warned that the procedure carried a high risk of brain bleeds and stroke.
But she said: “We had no choice because they said if they didn’t put him on it, he wasn’t going to make it through the night.”
Ollie was expected to need the treatment for weeks to give his lungs time to develop. But remarkably, he came off it after just four days.
Still on a ventilator, he then faced a risky sevenhour operation at 10 days old, when surgeons pulled the out-of-place organs back into their correct positions in the abdomen.
Ollie was well enough to go home at just five weeks old and he has astounded medics with his recovery.
Lauren said: “He’s so loving and wants to make everyone happy. He is a very determined little boy. He has been since day one.”