Story By: Anastasia Smirnova, Sub Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News

A mum told to leave her disabled son in hospital amid claims he needed round-the-clock care and would not live beyond a year has been reunited with him 16 years later.

Russian mum Irene Kuzmicheva, whose age has not been reported, discovered during the fifth month of a difficult pregnancy that her body was rejecting her unborn son Nikita, and that unless the baby was removed, they both risked dying, according to local media.

But when the baby boy was born, weighing just 900 grammes, he was not breathing and after he was reanimated, he was diagnosed as suffering from cerebral palsy, hydrocephalus and epilepsy among other problems, and doctors said he would not live longer than a year.

The mother said: “Doctors told me that the boy won’t survive.”

Irina added: “They told me he would not survive, learning that his brain damage was severe and irreversible was the worst moment of my life. The thought that my little boy would never move or talk on his own. I felt like I was going insane, I would run around the hospital screaming in the night, and I constantly needed sedatives.”

She agreed to leave the tot behind after doctors reportedly convinced her to do so.

She said: “They convinced me, and I signed the baby over to them.”

After 18 months, she and her husband contacted the hospital where they found the boy had survived and had been moved to a children’s home.

However, the children’s home allegedly refused to allow them to see the boy, saying that he was in need of constant medical attention and insisting that he would not survive, requesting that the parents leave him in their care.

She said: “For the next 15 years there was a constant weight on my heart and I couldn’t stop thinking about him. I would watch some TV shows that were related to children and would get suffocated by tears pouring out of my eyes.I would imagine that he would be three years old by now. I would heard some song that played back in the days, and everything inside me would turn upside down.”

But life changed when the couple received a note in February of this year telling them that they needed to start paying financial support for their son, after a change in the law.

It meant they learned that their son was alive.

Her husband went first to visit their son in a care centre in the Veshnyaki District in eastern Moscow. The boy was well looked after and cared for, but very disabled, according to local media. The family then took him home.

She said: “When I walked along the long corridor, I thought I would collapse, but when I saw him, I relaxed straight away. His appearance was irrelevant, and as soon as I saw him it was like a weight lifted from my heart. Hugging him was easy and calm, and life suddenly was so much easier than it had been for the previous 16 years.”

The family are now helping to take care of the youngster.

Having him with her has not been easy, he needed care at night over the first few days, a careful diet, but after two months she says it is now much easier. They also say that the family can detect his emotions, and recognise the sounds he makes to indicate when he wants something.

She added: “The only regret is why I didn’t do it earlier. For the first time in my life and I am happy, and I no longer suffer from depression or struggle to get up in the morning. Of course there are difficulties, but they are nothing compared to what I was suffering before.”

The owner of the children’s charity Children.pro, Yulia Tarasov, said: “It is an inspiring story. It is not often that children who are so heavily disabled later in life taken in by their families.

“I think this is a unique case that a blood relative has adopted such a child. I have known him for five years, and we make sure that all of the children in our care have a special adult who acts like a parent. But of course this cannot compare with real parents. It is really amazing that he found a home and relatives and especially relatives who are so loving.”

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