Callum Connor's parents were told to prepare for the worst and say their goodbyes to their beautiful little boy immediately after his birth.

But after a lifesaving dash to another hospital’s intensive care unit and a full year of treatment, ‘bright, intelligent’ Callum is now preparing to  celebrate his eleventh birthday on Friday - Remembrance Day. 

On 11/11/2011, Carolann Caveney-Connor went into labour with her son and after experiencing a very stressful delivery with numerous complications, Callum inhaled the meconium which resulted in him being born with a collapsed lung. 

Simon Caveney-Connor, Callum’s father, said: “The staff at Tameside Hospital and at Bolton Hospital neonatal were fantastic and did a great job of giving him the care he needed.” 

'As soon as he was born, they took him straight off me and he wasn't breathing'

Recalling the horrific experience for the Ashton family all those years ago, Carolann said: “I was really struggling to deliver due to a condition I later found out I have, so they were forcing dilation quicker but this was when Callum’s heart rate dropped. 

“The nurses started going in to get blood and check his oxygen levels, carrying out lots of checks on him and they found that he was starting to panic. They told us that they needed to get him out as soon as possible, but I still hadn’t dilated. 

“At the last minute, as they were preparing a theatre for me to have a section, I dilated and they just said to me ‘you’ve got 15 minutes to get him out, if you don’t then we’re going to really struggle’. 

“As soon as he was born, they took him straight off me and he wasn’t breathing. I didn’t even know what gender he was, what he weighed, or what he looked like. They wrapped him in a towel and just sort of hovered him over me, like in The Lion King. He looked like he was in shock, his mouth open and eyes bulging. They had to whisk him off immediately to get him to breathe.  

“They took him up to intensive care and I had no idea what was going on. The nurse told me that because of all the stress through the delivery, Callum had actually swallowed the meconium and so when he was breathing out, his lungs wouldn’t deflate so he ended up popping his lung. 

“The hospital told us they didn’t have the resources there to treat him and they were going to have to send him to Bolton Hospital. 

“They said we were going to have to come and say goodbye because he might not make the next two hours. I went up into intensive care to see he had tubes coming out of him left, right and centre. 

“The nurse took a picture for me and, as she handed it over, she said that it was just in case the worst came to the worst. They wouldn’t discharge me when the ambulance arrived for him as I’d just had an epidural. I refused to stay at the hospital; I needed to go with Callum.  

“So they ended up referring me to Bolton Hospital too and, on the way there in the ambulance, they had to resuscitate him twice because he’d stopped breathing. 

“Every day for the next week, he was losing something – his oxygen started going down, the tube to check his heart rate started coming off.” 

Callum Connor and his family 

Callum's 'miraculous' recovery

But amazingly, over the course of the following week, the couple began to see improvements and were then told by the doctor that Callum had made a ‘miraculous’ recovery. 

Carolann said: “The hospital said they were happy with him after a few more days but they warned us that with every milestone he reached, they worried he wouldn’t make it. So we just had to keep achieving those milestones, but he ended up hitting every single one out the park.” 

Exactly a year after his birth, Callum was discharged from the hospital.

After his lungs collapsed, it was classed as a pneumothorax and he had to have a draining so he now has a scar. But Carolann and Simon said that he loves his scar and is proud of it. 

Callum Connor 

They said: “Every time he looks at it he tells us ‘that’s from when I was poorly’. At the bottom of the stairs in our house, we have a collage too with the photo the nurse gave us in the hospital in the centre and then lots of other photos around the outside, his little milestones like his first Christmas etc." 

Eleven years later, Callum is now in Year 6 and has just sat his mock SATs tests – achieving 107 on his maths. He enjoys swimming and scouts, and is described as a ‘bright, intelligent young boy’. His favourite number is eleven and he’s noticed that everyone does a silence on his birthday each year at 11am (for Remembrance Day). 

His parents highlighted that despite his ‘really scary’ start in life, he doesn’t let it define who he is or stop him from reaching his full potential.

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