Tot safe after scary holiday arrival

STACY SQUIRES/The Press

HOME AT LAST: Connie Lilley is happy to be back in Christchurch with baby Drew and grateful for the life-saving care they received in Australia.

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A tiny "million-dollar miracle baby" has been brought home to Christchurch for Christmas.

Drew Lilley weighed just 760 grams (1lb 11oz) when she was born 16 weeks premature while her mother was on holiday in Australia.

Things had been "touch and go" for both mother and baby.

However, after more than three months in intensive care, the Lilley family was flown home on a CareFlight jet last week.

Drew has settled into the neonatal intensive care unit at Christchurch Women's Hospital and will, hopefully, be heading home in the new year.

Connie Lilley, 32, said she would be eternally grateful to the Australian doctors and nurses who saved her and her baby's lives.

A trip to Port Douglas with her mother in August was to be Lilley's last holiday before her baby was due in December.

After days of relaxing on the beach and beside the pool, the first-time mother woke the day before they were to leave in terrible pain and bleeding.

Half her placenta had broken away, leaving both mother and baby's lives in danger.

"I just remember pain and bleeding, panic and fear, because everything had been going OK," Lilley said.

"I remember thinking I had read that at 24 weeks babies are now viable, so they can save them."

Lilley was rushed to Cairns Hospital in a "wild ambulance ride" and underwent an emergency Caesarean section.

Drew was flown to Townsville's neonatal intensive care unit, where she was placed in an incubator with machines breathing for her unformed lungs.

"The separation anxiety was pretty extreme; it was horrible, and coming to the realisation of what had happened, because you don't expect things like that to happen," Lilley said.

Despite being hit with all the complications and infections that affect premature babies, Drew fought back and by December was stable enough to return to Christchurch.

Lilley said she and husband Gavin called Drew their "million-dollar miracle baby".

They had been told the cost of neonatal intensive care was about $10,000 a day, and Drew had an 83-day stay.

"A simple thank-you is all they [health professionals] get, but they save your life – what do you say to people who save your life?" Lilley said.

Luckily, she was covered by a reciprocal health-care agreement between New Zealand and Australia and had travel insurance to cover the extra cost of living in Australia for three months.

Now weighing more than 2.5 kilograms, Drew loves wriggling around and doctors say she is likely to grow up as a healthy little girl.

- © Fairfax NZ News