Liver transplant baby Lottie Bryon-Edmond inspired a Birmingham Mail campaign to boost organ donation after her emotional fight for life. Health Correspondent ALISON DAYANI catches up with her progress as the tot celebrates her first Christmas, which doctors thought she would never see.
GURGLING and smiling at the baubles on the Christmas tree, it is hard to imagine tiny Lottie Bryon-Edmond was never expected to survive, let alone celebrate the festive season.
Aged just five weeks, Lottie became the smallest baby in the world to successfully undergo a lifesaving liver transplant when the procedure was carried out at Birmingham Children’s Hospital.
Four months on and she is breathing unaided as well as laughing and screaming like any other child her age.
Lottie’s plight at the top of the UK’s super transplant list sparked huge public concern and inspired the Birmingham Mail’s Lottie’s Lifeline campaign to boost numbers on the NHS organ donor register.
It was thanks to a child donor that her 11th hour transplant took place in August.
Her mum Julie Bryon-Edmond, a 40-year-old sales manager who grew up in Great Barr, said: “Lottie is remarkable.
“I look at her every day and think it’s amazing what she has been through. Despite it all, she is so content and happy.
“This time last year, I was pregnant with Lottie and didn’t know how crazy the coming months would be.
“I look back at how she was, fighting for life and so tiny, and I can’t believe the difference. She is still a feisty little thing, but she giggles, mimics us and laughs like any other baby.
“The scar from her transplant is just a pencil line now.
“It took time to adjust when we first got Lottie home and I had time to think about everything.
“For me, it was emotional, like post-event trauma. She was born in hospital, spent months in hospital and then we were home.
“As a mother, your lioness instinct kicks in and I’d do anything to protect her. I want her to have as normal a life as possible.”
Back at home, in the aptly-named Livermead Lodge in Torquay, Devon, Julie and Lottie’s dad Chris are cherishing the Christmas together they feared would never happen.
A stocking with Lottie’s name hangs proudly next to the tree and the little lady herself is kitted out in the cutest of red Christmas outfits.
Since leaving intensive care at the Children’s Hospital, they have endured a hard slog keeping up with Lottie’s drug regime and ensuring she is kept safe from infections, including flu and chicken pox.
The tot is now down from a mix of ten drugs four times a day to just three different doses a few times a day. She is also finally able to feed from a milk bottle.
Chris, a 47-year-old financial advisor, even had to stay away from Lottie and their detached home for 21 days over fears he had an infection that could prove life-threatening to the baby as her body became used to the replacement liver.