- Our little family consists of myself,
my husband Chris and my beautiful
little girl Anika who is four.
Anika was born weighing a very healthy weight
at gas of 909.
And all of a sudden Chris and I are new parents
and we couldn't have been happier
and everything was perfectly normal.
We were just ready to delve into being mum and dad.
The first moment that we thought
that maybe there was something not quite right.
We we're actually getting ready
to be discharged from the hospital.
We were giving Anika her first bath.
And during that time she had been having this funny
little movement in her hand.
And it was just very rhythmical like this.
This little movement all of a sudden got very severe
and it went from hand to foot
all the way up into her face started ticking
and then she couldn't breathe.
She was loaded up with some
really significant antiseizure meds.
And all of a sudden we heard the sirens
and they were coming for our baby.
And they took her down to the John Hunter.
She went into the NICU
and we didn't know what had happened to Anika.
My husband and I had all manner of things
going through our mind.
What could it possibly be?
Our baby who was only 36 hours old
had to undergo lumbar puncture and she had an MRI
and within an hour or so of the MRI,
we were met by the director of the NICU.
The minute we heard the words out of his mouth that,
"Your baby has had a stroke."
We were, we just, we looked at each other.
We couldn't understand what was being said.
We had no comprehension because strokes aren't for babies.
Strokes are for older people or unfit,
unwell, unhealthy people.
They're not for brand new babies.
They didn't think that she would be able to feed.
They didn't know whether she would be able
to see or hear, walking.
And those sorts of things
were at that point well off the cards.
We were basically told to just love our baby.
(gentle upbeat music)
I had no knowledge that there was a correlation
between a stroke at a young age and cerebral palsy.
She was six weeks of age
the very first day that we walked
into the Cerebral Palsy Alliance at East Maitland
as we now know early intervention is so important.
So it's some, it's been key for her.
That was the big thing that we did.
We started with physiotherapy
because that was the most important thing
was to try and get Anika's
right-hand side responsive and moving.
It's basically her brain was neglecting to communicate
with the right hand side of her body.
- So given Anika started with us at six weeks old
and she's now four, there's been a lot of progress.
So the early things of reaching
out with that right-hand was exciting and rolling.
Crawling was a really lovely thing because it's really hard.
And a lot of kids with hemiplegia struggle with crawling.
So she was able to get her crawling.
And then from there she's just, pulled up to stand,
walked, running, climbing the works now.
And progress wise just how well she's done
that has surprised me
because her stroke was pretty significant.
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- The progress in Anika has been incredible.
We've gone from having a little girl who had no knowledge
of the right hand side of her body
to having a now four year old little girl who runs
and jumps and skips and climbs
and does every single thing that a four year old should do.
But from what we were told initially,
the little girl that we would have
to the beautiful little girl that we have today
it's just, it's miles away, it's unfathomable
what she is and what she will be.
We were quite lucky in that Anika's therapy
as it started at six weeks of age,
the Cerebral Palsy Alliance covered Anika's therapy
until she was just over 12 months of age
when her NDIS funding kicked in.
That's not insignificant.
It's something that meant the world to our family.
That absolute reality of the cost
of getting through those sessions before your child
gets their NDIS funding is significant.
And there are families that wouldn't be able to do it.
So we don't for a second discredit
how very very important that gift to our family was.
If you're thinking of donating
to the Cerebral Palsy Alliance
I urge you to absolutely go ahead with that.
The gift that you are giving is immense.
Every single child deserves to have access to therapies.
It doesn't matter what the background,
it doesn't matter the reason
for the diagnosis of cerebral palsy,
they all need to be able to get
these early intervention services
and it's not free and it's not cheap.
So I would absolutely say please, if you can
if you've got the resources to do it,
please make the donation
because the difference it makes
to not only the child
but to the family is just incredible.
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