Mum and dad saved my life...and then I was their bridesmaid

Cute as a button in her fairy-tale dress, little Eloise Shaw made a perfect bridesmaid at her mum and dad’s wedding.

- LUCY LAING

Tears of joy flowed as guests watched the two-year-old girl and her pageboy brother Jacob, four, listen to their mum Lea and dad Ryan say “I do”.

Everyone knew Eloise was only there for the big day because her mum and dad had each, separately, saved her life.

Lea, 40, a teacher, says: “It was such an emotional day, because everyone knew what Eloise had been through.”

A few weeks after she was born, in December 2021, Eloise had started to develop jaundice.

Lea says: “Nothing was picked up in the pregnancy and when she was born, for two weeks we thought we had our perfect little family.

“Then she started to look a bit yellow, but the midwife said that it was normal, and a lot of babies develop jaundice.”

But tests at the local hospital revealed something was wrong with her liver.

“We saw on her notes from there that they suspected she may have a condition called biliary atresia, where the bile ducts don’t form properly,” says Lea. “We were so shocked, we had never imagined that there would be anything seriously wrong.”

The diagnosis was confirmed five weeks later at King’s College Hospital in South London and the following week Eloise had a Kasai procedure, where surgeons attempt to remove the diseased bile ducts and redirect the bile flow from the liver.

Not always successful and, sadly, a few months later the procedure failed.

Lea says: “She started to deteriorate quickly. By June 2022 she couldn’t keep anything down and she was put on the transplant list.

“But she was taken off again as her condition worsened, as she was deemed too ill for a transplant.

“She was given a blood transfusion and she was sleeping for 23 hours a day.”