Miracle mum Amber shares Emilia's story:

Emilia was born at 37+1 after a very quick labour lasting a total of 5 hours from my first contraction to her birth. When she was first born everything seemed okay but about 10 minutes later, she went purple and wasn’t breathing very well by herself. The midwives called a code and what seemed like the entire staff of the hospital rushed in and took Emilia away. I had absolutely no idea what was happening and was so afraid and upset, my partner went with Emilia into the NICU while I was getting stitched up and recovering from the epidural. Emilia was put on CPAP for 12 hours and thankfully became able to breathe by herself on room air, however she began to have what looked like contractions of her diaphragm and noisy breathing. When Emilia was 2 days old, we were sent home and began to finally relax about the situation, however during a follow up appointment two days after we got home she was admitted back into the NICU. We spent 2 weeks in the NICU at RDH however unfortunately despite their extensive efforts they could not find what the problem was and did not have the equipment to investigate further, so we were sent via Careflight to the Adelaide Women’s and Children’s Hospital. At the WCH, Emilia was diagnosed with laryngomalacia, tracheomalacia and a rare condition called respiratory flutter syndrome. Emilia also could not coordinate her swallow properly and was unfortunately swallowing her milk into her lungs instead of her stomach, posing a significant risk to her lung health. She was subsequently fed exclusively via nasogastric tube and nil by mouth. Two weeks after our arrival in Adelaide, and once Emilia had been monitored for a satisfactory amount of time and the professionals were happy with her, we were sent back to RDH and discharged back home the next day. A few weeks later, after cheekily pulling her NG tube out 3 times in one weekend resulting in 3 separate trips to the emergency department, Emilia contracted covid and a nasty UTI which saw her admitted to the hospital again for the week. She thankfully quickly recovered from this however still went on to pull her nasogastric tube out and thought it was quite funny. At 6 months, when Emilia was able to commence solids and with the help of special slow flow bottles and some thickener, she was able to be taken off the nasogastric tube. She is now 10 months old and has been nasogastric tube free for 4 months and absolutely LOVES solids (nobody is allowed to eat in front of her without sharing some with her or she becomes very angry!!) She is a bright, happy, cheeky girl and me and our family are so incredibly lucky and grateful for her. We are also beyond grateful to all the services involved in helping our girl and us, including miracle babies. I found a lot of comfort in knowing we weren’t alone in what we were going through. ❤️