He captured the hearts of the city, and now 9-week old Nikita Shelkovyy is back in the hospital.

Nikita’s father, Yuriy, tells CTV Ottawa his son stopped breathing seven more times.

Nikita’s heartbreaking condition was made public after he stopped breathing while travelling down St. Laurent Boulevard with his parents Oksana and Yuriy on September 14th.

Several strangers, just passing by, came to the boys rescue , performing CPR until emergency crews arrived.

Nikita and his family were reunited with some of those rescuers before the boy’s initial discharge from CHEO last Monday, September 18th.

At the time, doctors believed Nikita was possibly suffering from a virus, and it may have been a form of reflux that caused him to stop breathing.

Just hours after discharge, it happened again at home while Oksana was breast feeding, forcing her to perform CPR.

Since then, Nikita has been at CHEO while doctors try and determine the cause of the terrifying episodes.

Yuriy tells CTV Ottawa, Nikita underwent day-long tests Monday on his brain, heart and digestive system.

The Shelkovyy’s are championship ballroom dancers and instructors, the owners of ‘Dance with Us Ottawa’ studio; they’ve been sidelined to care for their son.

“When we learned of what they were going through, through your story, immediately we wanted to do something,” says fellow ballroom dancer and friend TL Rader.

Rader and her husband Chris own Ottawa’s ‘Dance with TLC’ studio, they’ve launched a gofundme page "For Nikita...the Tiny Dancer" to raise money for the couple.

“If they’re not instructing, they are not making money,” says Rader.

In addition to covering the couple’s day to day costs, Rader hopes the money raised will help to purchase medical-grade equipment that would monitor Nikita’s breathing at home.

“They have to pay rent and have a mortgage to pay, the costs just to be at CHEO for as long as they are, food, parking and everything that goes along with it,” says Rader, “they don’t know how long they are going to be doing this.”

In just 19-hours the gofundme page raised more than $12,000 of its $20,000 goal.