A baby survived open heart surgery twice within days of each other when she was only three-weeks-old.
Niamh Goswell, who is now eight-weeks-old, was born prematurely through a C-section and as a result of a birth defect was “whisked away to intensive care straight after.” After two days of her mums, Emma Goswell and Siobhan O’Neill, feeding and changing her nappy through an incubator, Niamh was transferred to Liverpool's Alder Hey Children’s Hospital, where she would be operated on to fix a problem with her heart.
When Siobhan, 40, went for her 20 week scan at the Oldham Royal Hospital in Rochdale, Greater Manchester, it became clear to the couple Niamh had a coarctation of the aorta, a birth defect in which a part of the aorta, the tube that carries oxygen-rich blood to the body, is narrower than usual.
