Black Santa organizer giving back to CHEO after hospital saved son's life

The organizer of a holiday event that lets Black children meet a Santa who looks like them is once again spreading cheer — this time to Ottawa's children's hospital for saving her son's life last winter.

Immediately after Mila Olumogba organized the Black Santa Experience in December 2022, her entire family got sick with RSV, a common respiratory virus.

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For her newborn son Adeyemi, respiratory illnesses are particularly dangerous. He was born with a ventricular septal defect — a hole in the wall of the heart near the arteries that connect to the lungs.

Adeyemi contracted RSV before a planned vaccination, and that "started the most harrowing three weeks of our life," Olumogba said.

He was admitted to CHEO on Dec. 12. Two days later, he was put into a coma, intubated and hooked up to a ventilator. Adeyemi was ten weeks old at the time.

"It is the worst sight that a parent could ever have to see," Olumogba told CBC Radio's In Town and Out. 

The same day Adeyemi was intubated, Olumogba went downstairs to get a meal. On her way back to the ICU, she heard the hospital direct staff to Adeyemi's room for a code blue — cardiac arrest.

"The hallway to the ICU just felt like it was ten kilometres," Olumogba said, describing the experience like a dream "where you're running but you're not moving."

Adeyemi was resuscitated, but doctors couldn't say whether he would live or die. Olumogba said the only hope she and her husband had to cling to was the fact the hospital was saying it hadn't yet lost a child to RSV.

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At that point, Olumogba decided to move into the hospital. Hospital staff gave her a room for parents close to Adeyemi, and for the next two weeks she stayed at his bedside until he recovered.

What left a lasting impression on Olumogba was the staff's kindness and dedication over the 19 days Adeyemi spent at CHEO.

"I just couldn't believe this seamless dance between all of them and how they worked as a team," Olumogba said. "I am not kidding when I say there was a moment where it was the cleaning lady who pulled out the crash cart.

"I'm not the kind of person that can experience something like that and just go back to life the way it was."

An idea to give back takes shape

During Adeyemi's hospitalization, Olumogba passed time by looking for Black Santa plushies for the 2023 photo shoot.

After finding some, she decided to launch her business, Colour Me Christmas — a social enterprise that sells a variety of racialized Christmas products, Olumogba said, and returns some proceeds to pediatric hospitals. 

Olumogba said she had the idea for a long time, but believed it would be a retirement passion project once her children grew up.

She also wrote a children's book called Dr. Santa & The Miracle Makers. The story follows baby Yooku during an unfortunate holiday hospitalization, until Dr. Santa and his Christmas team help Yooku get better.

"It's sort of my love letter to health-care heroes everywhere," Olumogba said, adding the book highlights different ICU professionals to teach children about what they do.

"I don't think people understand what it is they have to do day in, day out … and to still be able to come to work every day with a compassionate heart."

Olumogba said she also plans to host an annual brunch fundraiser for CHEO, with the first one — set for Dec. 10 — already sold out.

"That just tells me people want to support CHEO, want to have a great holiday experience and also have an experience with a Black Santa," Olumogba said.

"The staff at CHEO saved me," Olumogba said. "They saved my son's life, but they saved me."