Ellis Farley Coombes was born on July 27th 2004 after an uneventful pregnancy. We wish we could say the same about the delivery.

In short, Ellis was born 10 days overdue, by emergency C-section because of fetal distress and dangerously low oxygen levels. Once delivered, Ellis was not breathing and was resuscitated in the operating suite. He was rushed to SCBU and immediately placed on a ventilator. It was apparent that Ellis had not been breathing for some time due to Meconium aspiration. In the very early stages of his life we were told to anticipate the very worst.

As it turned out, Ellis was a born fighter from the very beginning and within 24 hours no longer required ventilating. Though still very ill, we had hope and he was showing all the right signs. He continued to make massive leaps in progress, much to our delight, and as confided by a member of the SCBU team, to their surprise.

We were obviously delighted to be allowed to take Ellis home finally after 10 days in SCBU, though we were cautioned that there would be no way of knowing the longer term effects of oxygen starvation until much later in his life - there could be no ill-effects or many - we began to play the waiting game.

The photo here shows Ellis in SCBU, fed by naso-gastric tube, with no obvious signs of his birthmark. But, if you look very closely you can see a slight reddish tone over the right side of his face and a distinct narrowness to the eye where the birthmark eventually grew.

We should add that the difficulty and trauma of Ellis' birth is not linked to his hemangioma, though extensive research has been and continues to be carried out (much in the US) there is still no known cause or differentiator.