- Victorian mum Rosie Hill, 31, believed her severe headaches, nausea and exhaustion were part of a difficult recovery after giving birth to son Raffy
- After a frightening seizure at home when Raffy was just six weeks old, an MRI revealed a 6cm brain tumour in her frontal lobe
- Now awaiting brain surgery, she calls her baby boy her ‘little hero’ for saving her life
Here Rosie Hill, 31, Frankston South, Vic tells her own story in her own words
Cradling my baby boy Raffy against my chest, I breathed in his sweet, newborn smell.
‘Give me more of these!’ I’d said to my husband, Cameron, 34, after our first son, Woody, was born in May 2024.
Now, with two beautiful boys, I felt so lucky.
Cameron and I met in 2020, when he was the electrician fitting out my hair salon.
After falling in love and travelling together, I fell pregnant with Woody.
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We eloped in Byron Bay in January 2024 when I was four months pregnant, and, when our gorgeous boy arrived, I immediately wanted another.
It was 12 months before I fell pregnant again.
Aged 30, other than a few coughs, colds and headaches, my pregnancy was going well.
Come February 2026, our baby was way overdue, so I was booked in for a caesarean.
I was expecting a straightforward birth, but in hospital, my epidural failed and I could still feel one whole side of my body even after an hour.
Then a mob of doctors and nurses swarmed.
‘What’s wrong?’ I panicked.
‘We’ve got about five minutes to get your baby out,’ doctors warned.
It meant a caesarean under general anaesthetic.
‘Do whatever you have to,’ I cried.
Seconds later, all went black. And when I came to, Cameron peered over me with our little baby in his arms.
‘It’s a boy,’ he smiled.
We named him Raffy, and Cameron explained he’d had a shaky start.
Our bub was born grey and unresponsive, so doctors had worked on him for seven minutes until he finally let out a little wail.
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‘You’re both here. You’re both fine,’ Cameron said, as I held Raffy’s tiny fingers.
Discharged two days later, instead of enjoying the newborn bubble as I had with Woody, I was in a world of pain, struggling to recover from the C-section. My stomach cramped, headaches came thick and fast, and I was constantly nauseous.
‘Something isn’t right,’ I said during repeated GP visits and calls to the hospital.
But I was reassured my difficult recovery was likely due to the general anaesthetic.
Six weeks later, after Cameron left for work one morning, while Woody was still napping, I fed Raffy, then put him back to bed and fell asleep.
The next thing I knew, I was in the bathroom.
I’d been vomiting, my head throbbed and my body ached.
Back in my bedroom, I saw my pillow was covered in blood, my jaw hurt and scratches ran down my ribs. I had no recollection of what had happened.
Jolted into reality, panic ran through me as I heard both my babies crying.
Then my dad Russell, 59, rang. He was due to pick us up later for Raffy’s six-week vaccinations, but could immediately tell something was wrong.
‘We’re coming now,’ he said as I struggled to speak.
Dad and my mum, Kelly, 61, called Cameron and they all rushed over, racing me to a GP.
‘Go home and rest. It sounds like a migraine,’ the doctor advised.
But my friend, Kat, a nurse and midwife, wasn’t convinced. ‘Get a second opinion,’ she insisted.
I was so petrified of having another episode while alone with my babies, two weeks later I saw my usual GP.
‘It sounds like you had a seizure,’ she said, referring me to a neurologist.
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Carrying out tests, he couldn’t confirm epilepsy from just one seizure, but until more testing was done, I couldn’t drive or be left alone.
‘If it isn’t epilepsy, what else could it be?’ Cameron asked.
‘Possibly a brain tumour,’ the specialist said, adding that it was extremely unlikely given my age.
The next week, in early May, I went for an MRI.
‘We’ve found something,’ the technician said. ‘You need to go straight to The Alfred Hospital.’
My stomach dropped.
There, I was delivered devastating news.
‘There is a tumour,’ the specialist said. ‘It looks like cancer, but we need more tests.’
I burst into tears.
For six agonising days, Cameron and I kept the frightening news to ourselves – even celebrating Woody’s second birthday while privately fearing I might not see his third.
Then specialists confirmed a tumour of approximately 6cm in my right frontal lobe, extending into a difficult-to-reach area.
‘It looks like a grade 2 astrocytoma,’ the doctor said, explaining it was a slow-growing brain cancer, but they wouldn’t know for certain until they sent some tissue for a biopsy.
Treatment would mean surgery to remove as much as they safely could, followed by possible radiotherapy or chemo.
Doctors explained the tumour had probably been silently growing inside my skull for decades.
Because it had grown so slowly, my brain had adapted around it.
If Raffy’s difficult birth hadn’t led to my terrible recovery and suspected seizure, I could potentially have gone another 10 or 15 years without knowing it was there.
By then, it could have become higher grade, too large or impossible to operate on.
Suddenly it hit me. Raffy was given to us for a reason – to save his mummy’s life.
‘You’re Mummy’s little protector,’ I whispered, as I cuddled Raffy close.
Now, I’m waiting for a date for my surgery to remove as much of the tumour as possible.
I’m terrified, but whenever fear creeps in I look at Woody and Raffy. I’ve got to do this for them. My little boys need their mum and, more than anything, I want to be there
to see them grow up.
And one day, when Raffy is old enough to understand, I’ll tell my little hero the extraordinary truth. He saved Mummy’s life.
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