Newcastle: Home time for Oakie!

When pregnant Brooke Wood went in for her 21-week morphology scan, her unborn son Oakie was diagnosed with left sided congenital diaphragmatic hernia (CDH).
This is a defect in an unborn baby’s diaphragm, the muscle that divides the chest and abdominal cavities.

CDH occurs when the diaphragm does not close the right way during the baby’s development and abdominal organs push through the defect into the chest cavity. Straight from birth, Oakie had to be intubated and had an operation on day 15 to reposition his organs back into the abdomen where they belong and rebuild a new diaphragm. He was cared for in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at John Hunter Children’s Hospital for his first six weeks of life. Once he was well enough, he moved to the Paediatric Intensive Care Unit. Oakie’s incredible strength and resilience has shone brightly through the first 12 weeks of his young life, and in July, everyone was hugely excited for him to go home for the very first time.