- Ebony Goddard, 20, from Crestmead, Qld, woke up in pain she never expected to be giving birth just hours later.
- Just 22 weeks along, Ebony was concerned about the dangers of having a premature baby, who was born weighing 499 grams
- After 151 days in hospital, baby Daisy was allowed home weighing a healthy five kilos!
Here Ebony tells her story in her own words.
As the sun shone through my bedroom window, I woke to an unnerving cramping in my belly.
At five months along with my first bub, a little girl, I was used to the odd aches and pains, but something about this felt different.
After a hot shower to ease the pain, I climbed back into bed and drifted off to sleep.
But when I woke an hour later, at 7am, with bleeding and a lot of pressure between my legs, panic set in.
‘I think something is seriously wrong.’
Not wanting to wake my partner Jeromy, then 22, who’d worked late the night before, I got out of bed and found my mum Dianne, 43, in the kitchen.
‘I think something is seriously wrong,’ I cried. I was terrified about the possibility of having a premature baby.
‘Let’s go for a quick check-up,’ she suggested, before driving me to Beaudesert Hospital.
‘I’m going for a check-up,’ I told Jeromy before heading out the door.
Doctors had me do a urine test. Sitting on the toilet, I suddenly felt an immense amount of pressure in my uterus.
‘I can feel something coming,’ I told the nurse.
Taking a look, her face said it all.
‘Your baby is coming,’ she explained.
‘The baby’s coming.’
It’s too early! I panicked. It was June 2024 and I was only 22 weeks and six days along.
The small hospital wasn’t equipped to deal with a premature baby, so I’d need to be transferred by ambulance to Mater Mothers’ Hospital an hour’s drive away in Brisbane.
Calling Jeromy, I could barely get my words out.
‘The baby’s coming. You need to get here as fast as you can,’ I choked.
Thankfully, he arrived in time to ride in the ambulance with me, while Mum dashed home to get my dad, Ben, then 44.
‘We’ll meet you in Brisbane,’ she promised.
By now the pain had subsided, but the pressure was so intense I felt the urge to push.
‘If you deliver in the ambulance there’s not much we can do to help your baby,’ the paramedic said.
‘Hang in there.’
Focusing on my breathing, I knew our girl’s best chance at surviving was by getting us both to hospital.
‘Hang in there,’ I told her, clutching my belly.
Arriving around an hour later, I was rushed into a delivery room where a doctor revealed the early labour had been brought on due to my shortened cervix.
Hearing about this condition for the first time, I was shocked.
‘There’s a chance your baby might not survive birth,’ he explained gently.
Terrified, I had to trust everything would work out.
Incredibly, within minutes, our sweet girl, who we named Daisy, was born.
Weighing a tiny 499 grams, she was smaller than a tub of butter.
‘There’s a chance your baby might not survive birth.’
You’re a little fighter, I thought as, with Jeromy alongside, doctors whisked Daisy off to NICU, where she was given oxygen.
A few hours later, Jeromy wheeled me down to meet our precious girl.
Born almost four months early, Daisy’s skin was translucent, and you could see her tiny heart beating through her chest.
But to me, she was perfect.
‘You did so well,’ Jeromy smiled.
As she was a premature baby, Daisy was in a humidicrib, and we could only touch her through a hole on the side. It was four days before she was stable enough for our first cuddle.
After making a nest of blankets for Daisy to nestle in, nurses gently placed my sweet baby girl in my arms.
‘Mummy loves you,’ I said.
She was so tiny, she fit in the palm of Jeromy’s hand.
Ten days later, doctors noticed Daisy’s tummy had ballooned and appeared bruised.
‘Daisy has an infection in her bowel and needs emergency surgery,’ they explained.
So we were walked across to the Queensland Children’s Hospital where they were better equipped to help.
My heart ached to be saying goodbye to my girl as she was wheeled in for her op.
‘You’re going to be okay,’ I said, kissing her forehead.
To save her life, surgeons removed a few centimetres of her necrotic bowel.
She needed another two surgeries four months later, in October, to clear the infection, where they removed more of her tiny bowel. Doctors were shocked at how quickly she recovered.
That’s our little miracle, I beamed.
But that November, when Daisy was around four kilos, there was more concerning news.
‘Daisy has some fluid and a bleed on her brain,’ a doctor said – it’s a common condition with premature babies.
So she had her fourth life-saving op where surgeons inserted a shunt – small tube – into her skull to drain the fluid and relieve pressure on the brain.
Thankfully, it was a success and Daisy kept thriving.
After 151 days in hospital, our darling Daisy was finally discharged, weighing a healthy five kilos, making her the earliest surviving baby in all of Queensland.
It was crazy to think we were taking our five-month-old girl home nearly two months after her due date of October 2024.
Though she still requires oxygen, Daisy, now seven months old, is a happy and cheeky little girl, weighing a much healthier 6.2 kilos.
While she might need more time to hit her milestones, like holding up her head and crawling, we know Daisy will get there at her own pace.
Our girl is proof that the best things come in small packages!
