Happy Birthday, Plunket! My Family's Century-Old Connection

The Plunket Ceo Knows First-hand That It's From Little Things Big Things Grow

- Hayley McLarin

Amanda Malu spent the last months of her pregnancy and the following first six weeks of her second daughter’s life nursing her father in Canterbury until he passed away.

Then Amanda suddenly found herself back at home in Wellington with two small children, away from family and disconnected from other young mums. She felt desolate – until she met her Plunket nurse.

“Being in Wellington with a three-year-old and a newborn, and having no family there, Plunket was really important,” the organisation’s chief executive recalls. “It was great to have that advice, support and reassurance that everything was going as it should, during what was a stressful time for me.

“It’s a shock for anyone, that first baby. You think, ‘Crikey, I’m totally responsible for the wellbeing of this little thing.’ You think you’ve nailed it and the second one comes along and you have a totally different child.”

Little did Amanda realise when she joined Plunket in 2014 that she had ties to the New Zealand service she experienced stemming back several generations, to when her great-uncle Thomas Mutu Ellison was a baby.