In the first of a series on people who made headlines in 2009, Alanah May Eriksen talks to the family of a baby born prematurely after the Samoan tsunami.
Out of his hospital incubator and at home in the green, secluded Waitakere Ranges in the loving arms of his family, little Tamatoa Ingamells is on the road to recovering from the trauma of his birth.
The 3-month-old boy was born a month premature, two days after his mother, Sarah Roberts, fled for her life during the Samoan tsunami at the end of September.
She was holidaying on the island of Savaii with partner Richard Ingamells when the waves struck.
Tamatoa had to be hooked up to oxygen and have an intravenous drip pumping antibiotics into him in Apia's Matootua hospital as he was unable to breathe on his own. He was also born with a cleft lower jaw and defects to his legs.
Samoa was unable to provide the care he needed so the New Zealand Health Minister stepped in and the Government paid for a medical flight to the Starship hospital in Auckland a few days later with two doctors and a nurse on board.
Tamatoa, whose name means "warrior" in Samoan, gave his parents a couple of scares during the flight when he stopped breathing.
After a month he was released from the Starship to his parents' home in Laingholm, West Auckland, where he lives with big brothers Senn, 6, and Finn, 7.
His parents attribute the dramatic improvement in his health to being surrounded by the comforts of home.
"He's gained a lot of weight, he wasn't gaining any in hospital," Ms Roberts said.
"But now that we have him home, he's put on about 300 grams a week."
Tamatoa still has a tracheotomy tube in his neck which needs changing every week. A tube from an oxygen machine is inserted into the trachea to clear his airways about twice every hour or more if he has a cold.
He also has a tube in his nose running to his stomach to feed him breast milk.
After "every test in the world", doctors have not found a reason for his irregular breathing, Ms Roberts says, but the family is prepared for any challenges to come.
A nurse from Waitakere Hospital visits once a week to weigh Tamatoa and check on his general wellbeing.
"He's an extremely settled baby," Ms Roberts said. "He's getting better all the time. He's not that much more work than a normal baby."
The family will take Tamatoa to a plastic surgeon next month to see about his cleft jaw and the deformities in his legs.
Ms Roberts and Mr Ingamells, a folk rock musician, are organising a fundraising concert for the maternity unit at Matootua in the Montecristo rooms at Toto restaurant in central Auckland at the end of this month.
Ms Roberts said that despite its limited resources and the pressure of treating tsunami victims, the hospital did everything it could for Tamatoa.
