Hello everyone!

My name is Tatiana, alongside me, I have Juan David and Santiago. We are the parents and older brother of little Mattias who is two years old.

Mattias was born a healthy baby weighing 3.78kg, delivered naturally with no health complications before or after birth. We stayed at hospital overnight and got discharged the following day. No recommendations were given, no maternal courses were offered and no nurse was present to check if my baby was properly fastened in his car seat.

Our first child, Santiago, who is 3 years old was born with Bilateral Cleft Lip, he couldn’t breastfeed but, I could extract milk and feed him with a special soft bottle provided by the cleft team from Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Sadly, during Mattias’s first 5 days of life at home, when it was meant to be all happiness in welcoming our new family member into our home. It turned out to be my worst nightmare.

Mattias was not latching nor feeding properly from me, when we then found out from the Health Visitor that he was tongue-tied and that we had to get that snipped for him of which we did, but he still was not feeding. Mattias was not sleeping and his body language said to me that something was not right, so I decided to call Triage and the Midwifery team to report it, but

instead I was told that his reactions were reflexes and that it was normal for a new-born to do certain movements, but I still wasn’t convinced.

On day 5, we had our next visit from the midwife, where she raised the alarm with her manager after checking Mattias and decided we should take Mattias to Children’s A&E as a Matter of Emergency as he was extremely jaundiced and had lost almost 14% of his birth weigh. Mattias was submitted to Watford General Hospital, where he was born, and was transferred to Luton & Dunstable Hospital the next day for intensive

Phototherapy treatment and a blood transfusion. Luckily the blood transfusion never took place as his umbilical cord had almost fallen off. We were hospitalised for nearly 2 weeks until we were sent home. Tests and an MRI’s came after the

discharge, where we unfortunately found out that his brain had been affected in the Basal Ganglia (part of the brain that controls his voluntary movements) causing Cerebral Palsy.

His hearing has also been affected, giving us the diagnosis of ANSD (Auditory Neuropathy Spectrum Disorder) and it is uncertain the way in which he can hear. Mattias also developed a mild Scoliosis and is currently under the care of many

specialists from various hospitals including the Neurologist and Audiologist from Great Ormond Street Hospital.

Mattias is currently a nonverbal toddler, he can’t sit, stand, roll-over, play or do any sort of activity a child his age can normally do.

Mattias loves to interact, have people around him and loves when he is being played with, he is generally a very happy boy, and always smiling at everyone and at everything that is around him. He’s a grateful little boy that has so much to give still.

Mattias works really hard during his therapy sessions, so hard that he wants to stand and tries to take little steps with my support, but his legs and body can't hold him for too long. It breaks my heart to see him rely on supporting seating

called XPanda most of his time, a standing frame that gives him the hope of independency and a walking frame he is yet to receive.

The plans I had for my family were demolished after everything that’s happened to Mattias. Seeing Santiago play on his own or do any activity in general without his little brother is just too heart-breaking for me.

Now my hopes and faith towards Mattias’s development have increased in finding out about a special treatment for him called Autologous Stem Cell Treatment for Children. This is where the doctor extracts his own mother cells, treats them

in the laboratory and reapplies them back into his own blood.

With this mother cells treatment, which will hopefully take place in Costa Rica, it will give us the chance and hope to finally see Mattias have a better quality of life and independency in the future. The cells after being applied, will seek for those non-functioning, replace them with new ones, and allow to regenerate for a better function and control of his body.

This treatment, if we can raise the funds needed has given us and both of our families the biggest hope to finally see Mattias have the life and live the life God had prepared for him when he was born.

Our hope and aim is to collect at least £15,000.00 as Mattias will need 3 sessions of mother cell treatment with a gap of 21 days in between each treatment. Each session has a cost of $4,680.00, plus the additional costs for our stay and flights for each

session as we don’t have anyone in Costa Rica to support our stay for the entire treatment.

We plea for help to the public, friends and family to help us fundraise for Mattias’s treatment.

In advance, we thank everyone who contributes towards his treatment; it will change our lives, and most importantly of all, Mattias’s.

May God bless your wonderful and kind hearts,

Tatiana, Juan David, Santiago & Mattias