Eadie's Story
Eadie is one of the 2000 premature and seriously ill babies cared for at Mater each year. She was born 10 weeks early and was therefore not physically able to meet any of her early developmental milestones. She was too young and too underdeveloped to even breathe for herself.
Eadie’s first milestone was to survive her sudden and dramatic birth, and to stay alive.
At her 20-week scan, Sarah-Jayne was diagnosed with stage four placenta previa—meaning her placenta was completely covering her cervix. This can be a very dangerous condition for mum and her unborn child as if it detaches, it can result in rapid, heavy blood loss, very quickly. Hearing this diagnosis, Sarah-Jayne's heart sank-but she knew that she had to stay strong for her unborn child.
At 30 weeks Sarah-Jayne suffered a massive bleed at home and within 46 minutes her child would be born very suddenly and dramatically.
At 10.36 pm, Eadie came into the world via a quick and complicated emergency caesarean section weighing 1470 g.
The medical team got to work immediately to keep Eadie alive.
When a baby is as small and premature as Eadie was, life hangs in the balance. At this stage, Sarah-Jayne and Michael did not know whether their child was going to survive.
But she did.
Eadie couldn’t breathe on her own and was initially intubated and then put on Continuous Positive Airway Pressure for 14 days to help her breathe.
“Each milestone that she reached was an absolute miracle,” Sarah-Jayne said.
With the many premature babies that Mater cares for each year, similar stories to Eadie are not uncommon.
