"Margo needs your help"

Friday 06 September 2024

A mum with three baby girls to raise is appealing for donations to enable one of her triplets to travel to the Netherlands for stem cell treatment to give her the best opportunities possible.

Little Margo suffered a brain injury either during her birth or shortly before it, after sharing a placenta with her identical sisters for the previous 32 weeks.

That means she now has very different needs to her sisters Aggie and Edith.

While Aggie is said to be "ahead" of her milestones based on the girls' adjusted age of 10 months, and Edith is just behind her developmentally, Margo has her own set of milestones to meet, said mum Naomi Foley.

Pictured (l-r): Edith, Margo, and Aggie. 

Naomi explained that Margo was the first born of the three girls with her sisters Edith and Aggie following at two minute intervals.

Naomi was told that having identical triplets is a 1 in 200,000,000 chance so her high risk pregnancy was being closely monitored. 

Initially she was booked in for a caesarean at 34 weeks but after noticing the girls weren't moving at 31 weeks, and scans confirming that Margo and Edith were in distress, Naomi had an emergency c-section in Southampton.

After initially not being able to hold all three of her girls, Naomi said they will now be celebrating their first birthday on Monday.

"I can't believe it," she said. "It's weird looking back at photos because it feels like a different lifetime but it's also gone so quickly."

Pictured: Naomi Foley and her triplets.

Reflecting on the girls' individual development, Naomi said everything they each do is celebrated. 

"Aggie is ahead. She is now sitting on her own, as of last week. She's about to start crawling. 

"Edith is following Aggie but she can't quite sit unaided. She's having physio at the moment with her sister Margo.

"Margo has got different milestones. She won't sit, she won't roll over so things that aren't milestones are milestones for Margo - before she was gagging on calpol but now she's not. She has own milestones with her head control and things like that."

It's these personal milestones that Margo needs help to achieve to improve her quality of life.

"There's a place in the Netherlands called CDC Health, and they generally do stem cell treatment for stroke survivors," explained Naomi.

"What they do is they give them stem cells from healthy donors, and the idea is that the stem cells will go into the damaged cells and settle them and then you do physio to get all the sparks going, and over the next two months they expect them to start joining with the unhealthy ones and hopefully take over and be able to receive some good signals and tell them to learn.

Pictured: Margo with her mum.

"For Margo, she's got PVL which is something you get with prematurity. Realistically (CDC Health) believes that it could help her seizures because that's something that we really do struggle with, it could help her be more alert and help her muscle tone.

"It could give her a better quality of life and make her more comfortable and more aware of what's around her."

The stem cell treatment that Naomi and her partner would like to arrange for Margo will cost thousands of euros and is only available in the Netherlands. 

Because it is not yet approved by the NHS, Naomi has been told there isn't any States funding available so they have set up a gofundme page to try and raise the money themselves.

Set up just six days ago, at the time of writing the fund has accrued just over £8,000 in donations against a target of £18,000. 

Naomi hopes they can raise the money to pay for the treatment before Margo's second birthday.

Pictured: Naomi Foley with her hands full! 

"(The doctor) wants her to be 8kilograms, she is currently 6.9 which is very close but she is on steroids so when they stop her weight might go up a bit slower. 

"He said between one and one and a half is great because the brain's still got neuroplasticity, whereas when you start getting older, four or five years old, your brain is starting to develop those things and make those pathways and it's harder to do."

The stem cell treatment will be a one off opportunity but mum Naomi is hopeful that it will greatly benefit Margo's quality of life.

"They have varying results. The therapy you do afterwards is really important as well.

"I think for people that don't have such a severe injury it may be hard to tell the difference but for Margo, because her brain damage is so severe she has absolutely nothing to lose. I think when we do intensive physio afterwards we will see differences with her."

The gofundme page is available HERE.