Absent sign a matter of heart
After surviving a state highway night-time roadside birth and subsequent open heart surgery, Kayla Rout’s parents had a heart-shaped symbol installed marking the Northland location. Almost 30 years later, it has disappeared.
For as long as Kayla Robinson, nee Rout, can remember, there’s been a heart-shaped symbol on the side of SH1 at Mata marking the place she was born before undergoing open heart surgery. She hadn’t known any different until it was gone.
That was around Easter Friday, when she, her husband Jack and their two daughters were heading out of town on holiday and noticed it had disappeared from its permanent residence at the top of the hill near Oakleigh where Kayla was born.
“I never thought anything of it to be honest, but now that it’s been taken away, I’ve realised that it was special that it was there,” the 30-year-old said.
It was shortly after midnight on October 7, 1993, when Kayla’s mum Joanne went into labour.
Joanne still has vivid memories of that night.
“My husband [Tim] was a commercial fisherman and was way up north, which, in hindsight, was pretty stupid because Kayla was baby number two and the first one was born at the hospital after only 25 minutes,” she said.
Tim had not long returned when the couple realised the baby was coming. After a call to the midwife, they drove from their Ruakākā home toward Whangārei Hospital.
They were only minutes into their journey when the baby “just flew out”.
“It was pretty easy and surreal,” Joanne said.
Tim said his wife was “cool, calm and collected”, and had briefly pulled over and turned on the dim interior light to check all was well before continuing to the hospital.
“He had a quick look and thought she was quite solid so assumed it was a boy so we named her Marc. We turned the heating right up and wrapped her in a blanket as the midwife had advised. But it got so hot that, by the time we got to Maunu lights, I said if we didn’t open a window, I was going to pass out,” Joanne said.
“Tim put the window down a little and I was trying to suck air from out the top,” she laughed.
Their midwife was waiting outside the hospital and after helping Joanne deliver the placenta — also on the roadside — they went inside.
With their hour-old baby, Tim and Joanne phoned their parents and friends to let them know about their baby boy.
“But then the midwife had a funny look on her face and said: ‘Sorry to tell you this but the baby’s not a boy, it’s a girl!”
Marc was promptly renamed Kayla and mother and baby were placed in a ward while Tim was sent home to sleep, where he took the phone off the hook.
Joanne noticed sleeping Kayla’s skin looked clammy.
While she hadn’t turned blue, Joanne later found out that a baby with a heart condition goes to sleep then falls unconscious. “So she was heading that way, unbeknownst to me.”
Joanne hailed a nurse who was walking past and asked her to look at Kayla.
“She took one look at her and went and got a doctor.”
The doctor got a paediatrician who took Kayla away. Joanne remembers being on the other side of the door to her baby, who was by this time surrounded by specialists.
Unable to get hold of her husband, her mum arrived and waited with her before a doctor emerged to explain that Kayla had a heart condition and would need to be taken to Auckland Immediately.
A helicopter wouldn’t fit the team of specialists required, so a plane was chartered from Auckland and Kayla was whisked away from the hospital in an ambulance bound for the airport.
“The doctor advised me to go home and drive down the next day and I’m thankful I did as Kayla actually died in the plane on the way down. She flat-lined and they brought her back,” Joanne said.
Although Joanne had been oblivious to that, she remembers driving over the Brynderwyns and Tim, ever practical, asking how many people were needed to carry a baby coffin.
Arriving at Greenlane Hospital — in the days before Starship — their baby was hooked up to monitors and they were told she had a congenital heart defect called Transposition of the Great Arteries (TGA). That is when the two main arteries leaving the heart are reversed, reducing the amount of oxygen-rich blood.
Kayla would need surgery in a fortnight.
Surrounded by babies with heart conditions, Joanne recalled a confronting scene with one little girl in the next room not making it. However, Kayla’s surgery was successful and her health and livelihood from there were not impacted.
“I’ve been very, very blessed,” Kayla said.
“I play sports and I have a normal life, apart from having check-ups every year and a big scar where they cut me open and a pigeon chest and the drain holes all along my stomach.”
It was when she was aged about 5 that her parents, having driven the road from Ruakākā to town many times, decided to put a wooden heart made by her granddad at her birth site.
It read: “Kayla Rout, Born here, 7 October 1993”.
“There were so many crosses around Ruakākā from car crashes and I just thought a heart would be special and even more so because she had heart surgery,” Joanne said.
The heart even attracted a story on TVNZ’s Close Up when Kayla was 12. After it became weathered over time, Tim upgraded it for her birthday and had it vinyl-wrapped, before Jack had it revamped for Kayla’s 30th.
“Every time I go past, I always say, ‘Guess what? I was born there!’ Even if no one else is in the car with me,” Kayla said. “My parents would say, ‘Yes, we’re well aware you were born there Kayla’.
“It had also become quite a joke with my friends, who would say, ‘Oh, you’re a street kid’. I was very proud to be born there.”
Though it was still dark on Easter Friday morning, Kayla noticed it was gone. Jack stopped and searched in the long grass but to no avail.
Kayla posted her plight on Facebook, with commenters offering such suggestions as contacting the Whangārei District Council (WDC) or NZ Transport Agency Waka Kotahi (NZTA) to check regulations, and asking the farmer if he
had removed it. One observer said they last spotted it the Wednesday before Easter.
But the council knew nothing, with permission never having been sought to erect the heart.
Joanne said: “To be honest, I didn’t think about getting council permission back then but we did know the farmer because I later joked with him and said, ‘Oh, we should have just knocked on the door and asked if we could have the baby at your place’.”
The farmer, who still lives at the address, was also unaware of its disappearance. He said he hadn’t removed it and if he sees it he will put it back where it belongs.
NZTA confirmed it was not responsible for the disappearance.
An NZTA spokesperson said the agency generally leaves roadside memorials.
“The only reason to cause them to be removed are if they are distracting drivers or for safety rules.”
Kayla is devastated by its disappearance. She had planned to one day be cremated and have some of her ashes sprinkled at the site.