‘She isn’t the baby we had before holiday collapse’

The parents of a 19-month-old girl who suffered a brain haemorrhage while on holiday in Mexico have told how she is “not the baby we had before” and is yet to start walking or talking again.

Sienna-Rose, from Liverpool, collapsed in Cancun and underwent life-saving surgery before being flown home following a £150,000 fundraising appeal.

Her parents Liam and Natasha said they were now coming to terms with their daughter’s long-term recovery at the city’s Alder Hey Children’s Hospital.

Natasha said: “She was so bubbly, she was so full of life. What I’m looking at now is my daughter with a completely different personality.”

She continued: “Her journey starts now. It could be months, it could be a year. It’s like having a newborn again.

“We’ve got our baby [but] she’s not the baby we had before this happened. I don’t know this baby, I love her so much but I don’t know her.

“She can’t walk, she doesn’t talk, she just points at things she wants.”

The family told how they had “been to hell and back” after Sienna-Rose became ill two weeks ago.

She had been playing in the family’s hotel apartment with her two older brothers when she collapsed.

They then faced a struggle to bring her home amid complications with insurance, before strangers raised the money for the 11-hour flight.

Her father Liam said: “We were having a fantastic time and we were in the room playing.

“The baby just collapsed to the floor and was stiff. It was like I was frozen in time.

“She wouldn’t cry and a couple of minutes later she started vomiting everywhere.”

Liam said they ran outside and took a taxi to the nearest hospital, which was about an hour away, with Sienna-Rose remaining “completely frozen”.

“She was lying there, lifeless in the back of my arms in the taxi,” Natasha said.

“I said she’d just winded herself, but I knew it was bad. She couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t speak.”

The family said Sienna-Rose only received all of the treatment she needed after they had been to four hospitals.

The first asked them to pay £4,000 up front, which they did not have, while the second did not have the scanners to diagnose her.

Doctors at the third hospital told her parents she had suffered a bleed on the brain, but they did not have the facilities to treat it.

Sienna-Rose was was then moved to a fourth facility for treatment.

“I remember thinking, ‘she’s got a brain bleed, she’s dying now’. I knew she was dying,” Liam said.

Natasha added: “She’s progressing but she’s very unsettled, but they think that’s just her brain adjusting and healing.

“We’re just finding it hard to come to terms with what’s happened.”

The family said they later learned their travel insurance would not cover Sienna-Rose’s 5,000-mile (8,047km) journey back to the UK, which required special medical equipment, because they had mistakenly failed to disclose a previous unrelated overnight hospital stay.

The parents said they took full responsibility.

“It was our mistake and there is nobody else is to blame but us. We totally understand it was our mistake,” Natasha said.

Natasha’s sister-in-law quickly set up an online fundraising page which raised £70,000 overnight and later much more.

“I can’t thank everyone enough, there’s too many people to mention,” Liam said.

Natasha said: “It just gave us hope. I was thinking, we’re not going to get home. No one’s coming for us.”

Lia’s Wings, a charity that flies home critically-ill children, eventually stepped in and organised the flight they needed.

Sienna-Rose and Natasha finally returned on Saturday night and she was transferred to Alder Hey, where the family were greeted by a crowd of well-wishers.

“I just felt my legs give way,” Natasha said.

“Even now, I’m so grateful but I’m finding it hard to come to terms with what we’ve been through.

“You don’t ever think in your life that you’re going to go through something like that.”