shareyourwishes posted at Instagram:

Karen shares her story about her beautiful boy, Lewis who sadly passed away at the age of 2 years 8 months whilst waiting for a heart transplant. Lewis would have been 25 years old this coming August.

“On 5th August 2001, our beautiful fourth child, Lewis Jack, came into this world weighing a healthy 8 lb 1 oz. After the normal new-born tests, we were given a clean bill of health and discharged from hospital. We were very excited about returning home to our other three children, Kelly, Andy, and Tom, and they couldn’t wait to meet their new baby brother.

We found that Lewis did not feed well and seemed to sleep a lot. The midwife said he was just settling in, but after five days things hadn’t improved – only a few ounces at a time and then back to sleep. Our midwife told us she would go and get some different teats for Lewis’s bottles. She returned two hours later and held our son up to the window as she wasn’t happy with his colour. At that exact moment Lewis collapsed and went all floppy in her arms; he wasn’t breathing properly. An ambulance was called.

The next few hours were – and still are – like a slow-motion dream. We could see it all unfolding before our eyes but surely it wasn’t happening to us. One minute we were all at home with our four children, getting used to family life again, and then we were whisked off to special baby care and our newborn was being ventilated, with wires and tubes all over his little body. We were told Lewis had a serious heart defect, Hypoplastic Left Heart Syndrome. Basically, the left-hand side of his heart had not developed properly, and his tiny body was in total shut down. Our local hospital in Shrewsbury had to transfer Lewis to Birmingham Children’s Hospital for palliative surgery. They warned us he may not survive the journey. We were told Lewis could have three stages of surgery which should hopefully take him into adulthood; his only other option then would be a transplant.
Well, he did survive the journey and had his first stage of open-heart surgery at ten days old. He had stage two at four months and caught (and beat) the MRSA superbug twice.

Source: Instagram,
Account-Name: shareyourwishes

Created on: 2026-02-03 22:23:59