The Aiolupotea Family - Hastings
Lunetta and Fiti Aiolupotea were expecting their fourth baby towards the end of last year, when suddenly Lunetta went into early labour at 35 weeks. Hailing from Hastings with three other children at home: Malachi (10), Mikayla (7) and Ataliah (6), Lunetta explains that her pregnancy had been textbook up until that stage. “All of my scans had been normal,” she says, “but all of a sudden I had pain – I’ve been in labour before so I knew what this was!” The couple visited the hospital in Hastings and Lunetta was rushed into an emergency C-Section, as she was in active labour but not dilating; baby Perez was born on the 28th October 2023.
Quickly it became apparent that something wasn’t right with wee Perez as his oxygen levels weren’t stabilising. “SCIBU in Hastings rushed Perez and Fiti to Wellington, to the NICU there,” says Lunetta, “because I’d had a C-Section, I couldn’t go with them.” The next day, Lunetta was delivered the extremely difficult news that “I had to get on a flight as soon as possible, as the doctors in Wellington thought Perez was going to pass away.” Faced with this unimaginable possibility, Lunetta rushed on a Life Flight to Wellington, where an ambulance was waiting, lights flashing, to take her to her newborn baby. “The driver knew what was happening and said to me ‘I’m so sorry to hear’ – at this stage I was still trying to be positive, so that devastated me.”
The PICU team from the national children’s hospital in Auckland were flown down as Perez’s little body would not have survived the flight, and they brought their specialist knowledge and an ECMO (a machine that’s used is for life-threatening heart and lung conditions) to try to keep Perez alive. “His tiny body was lifeless, the machines were doing all of the work for him – breathing, regulating his blood through tubes, everything,” says Lunetta, “he was operated on by the team from Auckland, and at midnight they took him to the national children’s hospital in Auckland.” The couple had to wait an agonising 11 hours for their own flight up to Auckland, and to find out if Perez survived.
They made it to PICU in Auckland and began the painful journey of diagnosing and treating Perez. It turned out he had Hemitruncus – a congenital heart condition
that hadn’t showed up in Lunetta’s antenatal scans. Hemitruncus is an extremely uncommon anomaly, accounting for just 0.1% of all congenital heart diseases. Over the following seven weeks Perez kept having pulmonary hypertension episodes, remaining on a ventilator and having multiple surgeries – culminating in open heart surgery at just seven weeks old. When he was just six weeks old, Lunetta was told he might not make it. “I hadn’t even held him at this point,” she says, “I begged them to let me hold my baby – if this was his last day, just please let me hold him. They let me prop him up with pillows to make sure the ventilator didn’t slip out and made it possible. It was so bittersweet.”
The day Lunetta and Fiti arrived in Auckland, they checked in to the RMHC NZ Domain House moments away from the hospital. “I was overcome with emotion the day we arrived at Domain,” explains Lunetta, “Geraldine was there to greet us and was so sympathetic and caring. She gave us the space to cry if we needed to – we weren’t rushed through. The whole place makes you feel like you’re at home, in a safe environment.” They stayed with RMHC NZ for 73 nights in total, across a number of stays – with Perez’s older siblings coming up for two of these trips. “If RMHC didn’t exist, to be honest, we would have had to sell our house,” says Lunetta, “there’s just no way we could afford two months in a hotel in Auckland for all of us. And we had to stay together – it was vital for us. We thought our baby was going to pass away, being apart just wasn’t an option.”
The family were also at Domain House for Christmas 2023, and they were impressed by how special it was. “We got to pick out presents for all the kids from Santa’s grotto – oh my goodness, we were just blown away by the presents donated by wonderful companies and individuals,” says Lunetta, “The love and care that the team at RMHC and the supporters showed left me speechless. Even though we had a sick child, we didn’t want to neglect our other children – especially at Christmas. RMHC allowed us to be near Perez but still make sure our other children were happy at the same time. It was priceless.”
The family enjoyed special festive meals and the family Christmas party at this time as well. Lunetta explains, “we’d usually have a big BBQ in the backyard near our pool with all the extended family at Christmas. We really missed that. But knowing how much RMHC acknowledged the day and gathered everyone together blew us away. It was so special.”
Recently Perez turned one, and 200 people turned up at a local hall in Hastings to celebrate his first birthday – a milestone Lunetta wasn’t sure he would reach in those early days. “He’s so happy, he does everything a one-year-old should do – the only thing that has been slightly delayed is his mobility, but he’s getting there!”
Lunetta is still working through the understandable trauma she faced in those initial weeks, but she’s forever thankful to RMHC NZ for being “our safe haven. I remember getting a midnight phone call with scary news one night, and the receptionist jumped in her car to race us to the hospital so we didn’t have to walk. When we returned, there were frozen meals waiting in our fridge to make sure we were fed. The staff are always aware of what you’re going through and cater to that. Thank you so much for keeping our family together.”
RMHC NZ expects that roughly 100 families per day will arrive at their facilities these holidays, for their child to receive life-saving hospital care. Please consider donating today to support our end of year appeal, Season For Giving, by clicking here.