“I was told the defects were so severe I had to terminate the pregnancy then and there,” says Lauren, 36, as she looks over at Oscar, now seven, playing with his sister Ruby, six, in the Melbourne sunshine.
“But I was already showing – he was moving! I couldn’t do it. I couldn’t kill my baby.
“The doctor said there was no chance of survival, that he would be born and we would just have to give him compassionate care until he died.
“I thought, ‘If you find out when your kid’s seven that they need an operation to save their life, do you euthanise them? No way! You do whatever you can to give them the best chance at life’. So I said, ‘It’s not up to me to terminate – if he’s meant to survive, he will’.”
The next day, Chad and Lauren met with a cardiologist who told them Oscar would need three risky open-heart surgeries to have any chance at survival. It was a chance Lauren and Chad felt they had to take.
The three surgeries were some of the most agonising times of their lives but Oscar battled through them all.
And when other kids notice the scar on his chest, Oscar knows just what to say: “That’s my zipper!” “Why have you got a zipper?” ask the curious kids. “’Cause I’ve got a special heart,” he says proudly.
There’s every chance Oscar will need a heart transplant, but Lauren and Chad couldn’t be more thrilled with their little boy’s determination to live.
“I’ve got a lot to be grateful for, and I remind myself of that every time I see him smile and every night when I kiss him goodnight.”
Read all about Oscar’s incredible battle for survival only in Woman’s Day, on sale 1st May 2015.
Oscar amazes his family with his positivity against the odds.
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