K' Lee's girl turns 1 BIRTHDAY WE DON'T THINK WE'D SEE'

After a terrifying start to life, the Mai FM radio star celebrates her daughter Honour’s miracle milestone

- Cloe Willetts

It was a Monday morning last August when Mai FM radio host K’Lee received a frantic call at work from her partner, who screamed down the phone line that their baby daughter Honour had turned blue and stopped breathing.

Hearing her other four kids crying in the background, the Dancing With The Stars NZ contestant told him to get the oxygen machine and call an ambulance, before she rushed home from the studio overcome by fear, knowing her precious little girl was again clinging for life.

Five months later – after a harrowing beginning that saw Honour arrive almost 12 weeks early, then nearly die from respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and later a common cold – K’Lee’s youngest girl is miraculously happy, healthy and celebrating her first birthday this week.

“My partner Lama got the oxygen tank the hospital had given us and the nasal cannulas, and was ready to start giving Honour CPR because she started getting floppy, losing all colour,” recalls K’Lee, 38, remembering the day she sped along the Auckland motorway to get home to her girl, who was struggling to breathe after catching a cold.

“Her eyes were rolling back. My eldest daughter Iliana, who’s 14, called the ambulance and was amazing. I got there as they were loading Honour in. Again, like a trouper, she fought through it.”

Honour – whose proud mum describes her as having “the heart of a lion” – was born at 29 weeks and spent the first three months of her life in Auckland City Hospital’s neonatal intensive care unit.