A miracle baby will spend his first Christmas at home on Saturday.
“Little trooper” Lochlin weighed less than a bag of sugar when mum Leanne Mcgarva gave birth after just 25 weeks last December.
The tot spent more than five months in hospital before eventually being allowed home to Castle Douglas, where he celebrated his first birthday on Monday.
Leanne said: “We’re going to love every minute of having him home. Last year was a nightmare leaving him in hospital and trying to celebrate Christmas here. We’re just going to spoil him rotten.
“He has been a little fighter since day one. He is absolutely perfect.
“He’s got everyone wrapped around his finger – the slightest cry and someone is there to pick him up.”
Leanne, aged 41, and machine operator husband Colin, who is 31, have been married since 2019. They have two girls together and Leanne also has three boys.
During her pregnancy, she had to have her appendix removed, meaning Lochlin was already lucky to still be alive before she went into labour on December 20 – several months before her due date.
Although medics wanted her to give birth in Glasgow, her labour was so quick that Lochlin was delivered in Dumfries before being rushed to the Princess Royal Maternity Hospital.
He weighed just one pound 13 ounces – a mere 820g.
Leanne recalled: “The only way we could describe it was he was the length of a small Lucozade bottle. He was absolutely tiny.
“He breathed himself at first when he was born, which was unexpected, then they just ventilated him and took him up to Glasgow.
“When we got there we were told he was stable. He was still tiny and they couldn’t tell us exactly how he was going to pan out. He had to fight for his life from day one.
“There were quite a few times we would be sitting and his heart would literally stop and the doctors would have to come over to manipulate him to get him to breathe again as he would just stop breathing. The doctors were absolutely amazing.”
The couple made the difficult decision to come home to spend Christmas Day with the rest of their family, the staff at the hospital sending them videos of Santa visiting Lochlin.
And by the time they returned, Scotland was in its second coronavirus lockdown.
“It was awful,” said Leanne. “We lived in a Travelodge for about eight weeks.
“With Covid we weren’t allowed to touch him without gloves, aprons or masks. We didn’t get to kiss him for five months. We could hold him skin to skin but couldn’t touch him with our hands.”
Lochlin was allowed back to DGRI at the end of February but he was there for just a fortnight before he suffered a stomach infection, meaning a return to Glasgow – this time to the Queen Elizabeth Hospital.
He ended up being there for another seven weeks after developing sepsis but was finally allowed home – this time for good – on May 2.
And he doesn’t seem to be suffering any after effects from his early arrival into the world.
Leanne said: “He has had no problems at all – he gets common colds more than anyone else as his immune system is lower but he is absolutely perfect.
“He does have kidney problems but he would have had that any way whether he was premature or not – if he had been born at a normal age it’s probably that something they wouldn’t have picked up.
“With having kids myself, I thought how can something that small survive after just 25 weeks – but it proves miracles can happen.”
