A hundred and four days of pent-up anxiety and eventual joy turned to heartfelt disappointment on Monday when Durban couple Shane and Tanya Layden - finally celebrating being able to take their baby boy home from hospital after more than three months in the neo-natal intensive care unit (NICU) - did not even reach their destination.
While on their way home, baby Corgan started struggling to breathe and became weak, prompting his parents to take him straight to his paediatrician, who instructed that he immediately be readmitted to Parklands Hospital.
He had chest X-rays taken and, according to his dad, was in a stable condition on Monday night.
Earlier, Shane was smiling proudly in the hospital’s NICU as he watched his wife, Tanya, carefully wrapping their tiny baby boy in blankets.
The look on his face was obvious: it was the same beaming joy that is held by most new parents.
The difference in the Laydens’ case, however, is that baby Corgan had been in hospital for more than three months, and at only 1.91kg, the couple were finally preparing yesterday to take him home.
“It’s been 104 days,” Shane said, laughing nervously. He had been counting. And it had not been an easy wait either.
Corgan - named after Billy Corgan, leader of rock group Smashing Pumpkins - was born at Durban’s Parklands Hospital on October 27, 2010, at only 26 weeks, and weighed 520g.
The premature labour was brought on by Tanya’s placenta pulling away from her uterus, and because the placenta had not formed properly, Corgan was born 24 weeks into Tanya’s pregnancy. The couple did not expect their first child to make it.
Despite giving birth at about 5.20am, Tanya only saw her baby after 9pm that night. However, she had seen a photograph of him soon after he was born, and said she was “shocked” by what she had seen.
For the first five weeks Corgan was on a ventilator, then he was fed oxygen in the following weeks.
At no stage did the couple feel that their son was out of danger.
“We were just taking it moment by moment, just a day at a time,” said Shane. “It was all like a blur,” added Tanya.
Last week Corgan had surgery to repair an inguinal hernia.
“The day after that was chaos,” Tanya said, describing the stress related to the surgery.
Since he was born, the Laydens have been practically living at the hospital.
“We have hardly spoken to our friends or families. We haven’t really had time for anything,” said Shane. The worst part for them was leaving Corgan behind when they went home each evening.
- The Mercury