Christmas 2018: Gold Coast mum gets Christmas wish

Forget extravagant gifts, or holidays with the family, all this Gold Coast mum wants for Christmas is to hold her baby, free for the first time of medical cords and wires.

FORGET extravagant gifts, or holidays with the family, all this Gold Coast mum wants for Christmas is to hold her baby, free for the first time of medical cords and wires.

Now on the eve of Christmas Elise Bereza has been granted her wish, reunited with her new baby girl Sienna Adriana Bereza born on the 19th of December.

The baby was finally discharged from intensive care Sunday, after the Mermaid Waters family saw their baby girl rushed off for emergency blood transfusions just minutes after she came into the world.

“It was very scary, I had her for a moment and watched her go from pink to yellow to orange,” Mrs Bereza said.

Peter, Elise, Harrison (3yrs) & Sienna Bereza with their miracle baby just in time for Xmas. at the Gold Coast Private Hospital. Photo: Steve Holland

It was Elise’s second high-risk pregnancy after her first child developed anaemia in the womb because of an incompatibility between their blood types – a condition that can be fatal.

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When Sienna was diagnosed with the same condition at 12 weeks, Mrs Bereza was subject to weekly intravenous immunoglobulin (IVIg) infusions at the Private Hospital.

The baby however still needed emergency treatment, and was admitted to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit soon after birth.

Sienna Bereza just out of the NICU has her first proper hug with mum with Elise and dad Peter. (Photo/Steve Holland)

“I was able to give her a proper cuddle for the first time Friday but it has been hard with the lights and tubes in her,” Mrs Bereza said.

“She has had a full exchange of her blood in a transfusion, it wasn’t what we had expected.”

The logistics have been very hard on the family, as Mrs Bereza had been recovering in the Gold Coast Private hospital up the road.

“We have been apart for most of her life so far, all we have wanted was for the family to be able to spend time together at Christmas,” Mrs Bereza said.

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“But really at the end of the day seeing her out of intensive care is enough,” she said.

Though the pair expect to check out of the hospital for good soon, Mrs Bereza shed a few tears about leaving the team that had been with her every step of the way.

She has grown especially close to Obstetrician Adriana Olog, the woman behind her baby girl’s name.

“When we told her (Dr Olog) what we named Sianna Adriana she was speechless,” Mrs Bereza said.

“Dr Olog an absolutely amazing doctor and person.

“The way she is with you, the way she explains things, she just has that ability to make a human connection.

Dr Olog is the city’s only practising obstetrician qualified in Maternal Foetal Medicine (MFM) and had twice performed blood transfusions on Mrs Bereza’s first child in-utero.

“I have been at the hospital a whole day a week for the past few months so I will miss the beautiful people here,” Mres Bereza said.

“I’m starting to tear up but the staff have made me feel really special. I couldn’t have done it without them.

“They are the ones who have made this Christmas happen,” she said.