Changing Faces, Changing Lives
Poppy’s Story
Poppy’s Mum Nicole tells their story…
Poppy, now 20 months old (December 2024), had a rough entrance into the world via an emergency C-section due to fetal distress. Because of this, there was a pediatrician present in the OR with us, ready to assess her when she arrived.
After a week in hospital with Poppy facing a few different challenges, we were discharged to go home to two eagerly waiting big brothers, with our thankfully now healthy little girl.
Before discharge, Poppy’s (incredible) pediatrician, who we had seen multiple times over our hospital stay, mentioned that she had some slight concerns over the shape of her head, but due to a lot of swelling around her face, she wanted to follow up at a 6 week post birth check up.
Soon enough 6 weeks came around and after visiting her pediatrician, it was decided that a referral would be sent to hospital due to suspected Sagittal Craniosynostosis.
10 months and many scans, tests and specialists visits later we arrived at the hospital nervous but ready for Poppy to undergo a full Cranial Vault Remodel.
We are so grateful that we had so much family support from Jeremy’s parents, because we ended up spending a week away from our two older kids, 1.5 hours from home, it was hard for our boys to spend the time without us, while also feeling worried about their baby sister.
Poppy spent close to 12 hours away from us for her procedure. It was extremely difficult to be away from her especially knowing what was going on, even though we knew she was in the safest, most experienced hands possible, we still went through a huge roller coaster of emotions during her surgery.
The first 24 hours after surgery was definitely the hardest for her, but we were so surprised with how incredibly fast our baby girl recovered from there.
After a week in hospital it was time to go home, her recovery was and still is smooth sailing, two weeks after her surgery she was completely back to normal, back to her happy playful self.
12 weeks later we set off on a 6 month long adventure in our Caravan, travelling up the East coast to central Queensland, and if it wasn’t for the ear-to-ear scar on her head (that is in-fact now, barely visible) you would not know that our sweet girl underwent major Craniofacial surgery less than a year ago.
Spending time hospital definitely made us feel extremely lucky and grateful to live somewhere with such incredible medical facilities, available to us so readily, and for the wonderful medical staff who all played such a crucial role in Poppy’s journey.
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