Two weeks before giving birth, soon-to-be parents Lauren and Jaiger Hill checked in for a routine scan where a 7cm tumour was found between their baby's heart and spine. As Lauren left the hospital that day, anxious thoughts consumed her.
“I didn't know, you know, was I going to have him or was he going to pass away," she recalled thinking, on Saturday.
"Would we have him constantly in and out of hospitals? Was he going to go straight into surgery? "I was just spiralling."
But on 5 September, Jasper was delivered safely at Mater Mothers’ Hospital in South Brisbane. "It was eight minutes between being birthed and him ending up on c-pap (breathing assistance)," Mrs Hill said.
She got a quick kiss before her baby was taken to then Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.
The tumour turned out to be a rare cancer called neuroblastoma, which develops in early nerve cells and affects one in 8000 babies.
It is usually not detected until it starts to grow and compress nearby organs.
But because it was found early, Jasper was given the best chance of beating it.
"The survival rate with early treatment is about 90 per cent in babies under 18 months,” said Mater Mother’s Hospital Director Dr Glenn Gardener.
“If left untreated, the cancer cells can spread quickly to other parts of the body, such as the lymph nodes, liver, lungs, bones, central nervous system and bone marrow."
Four mums per year come to Dr Gardner with their babies who have this rare cancer, not always with as good a prognosis.
For Jasper, because his tumour was placed so close to the heart and spine, it was too dangerous to operate and so at three weeks old he started chemotherapy.
"I am still I denial and in survival mode,” Mrs Hill said. "Seeing him hooked up machine for the first round, he went so pale and quite sick, you know, he went form doing normal baby things to going quite limp, he wasn't even able to lift his head." But when this round ends, he has a three-year-old sister waiting at home to meet him.
“She doesn’t understand what cancer is and why her brother can’t come home yet,” Mrs Hill said. Home is the Gold Coast for the Hill family but Jasper is getting treatment in Brisbane at the Mater Centre for Maternal Fetal Medicine.
This means several times a week, Lauren and Jaiger make the hour-long drive to be with their 'miracle baby'.
"He's a fighter and he's so strong," she said.
The hope is to have Jasper home for Christmas and though the road ahead is long, Lauren says the odds are in his favour that he will survive.
“We want nothing more than for him to be cured of this cancer and to be back home enjoying life as a family of four, and to one day enjoy a holiday together," she said.
