When Tara Ladd discovered a slight yellow ring around her three-week-old son’s belly button, she had no idea their life was about to be turned upside-down.
Apart from a few feeding issues, Ari seemed to be a perfectly healthy and happy baby.
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However, after the yellow ring was discovered around Ari’s belly button, he was diagnosed with biliary atresia — a rare liver disease that blocks the bile ducts, causing bile to build up and damage the liver.
Tara said Ari was referred to The Children’s Hospital at Westmead to treat the disease, which she said she had “never even heard of”.
“Suddenly this perfect pregnancy and seamless birth was actually a lot more serious than we thought,” she told 7NEWS.
At hospital, Tara says her family was met with “sheer care and compassion”.
At just four weeks old, Ari had his first operation — a correction surgery called a calcite.
However, three months later Ari’s condition began to deteriorate.
Doctors then found the earlier procedure had failed to correct the condition, and Ari needed a new liver.
“Then it became a process of watching him get sicker before we could actually get him on the list for a transplant,” Tara said.
Ari was placed on the transplant list in February 2020 and, by May, Tara had received a call that a donor had been found for Ari.
“When you get the call … it was just this out-of-body experience, and then we were on our way to the hospital and I was just thinking about the donor family and what they were going through, it was a really emotional time,” she said.
Now, Ari is able to celebrate his fifth birthday thanks to the liver donation, with his family continuing to advocate for more awareness of organ donors.
“He is a very happy and bubbly little boy and we are so thankful to everyone — especially our donor family and the (volunteer-run) organisation of Donate Life, Transplant Australia and (The Children’s Hospital at) Westmead,” Tara said.
“Watching people volunteer their own time to help other people, I think that is just my utmost respect of someone who can have such empathy and compassion for other people.”
Currently in Australia, 4 in 5 people say they support organ donation, however, only 36 per cent are registered organ donors.
“Organ donation saves lives and increasing awareness and consent is critical to lifting our donation rate,” NSW Health Minister Ryan Park said.
“Opportunities for transplants are missed because families are uncertain of their loved one’s wish to be a donor. It is important for people in NSW to not only register but to tell their families they want to be a donor.”
Park said more than 50 Australians died last year while on the organ transplant waitlist.
The Children’s Hospital at Westmead, the biggest paediatric liver transplant centre in Australia, performs about 25 lifesaving liver transplants on patients such as Ari every year.