Christchurchtot's brave battle 'SHE'S OUR LITTLE SUPERHERO'

Mighty Maddi has spent almost half her life in hospital

- Hannah Finnigan Walsh

As Christchurch toddler Maddison Milne explores her backyard with a bright smile on her face, you’d never guess that, until recently, her entire world was contained within four hospital walls. Incredibly, the cheerful two-year-old has spent almost half her life in a pediatric intensive care unit, struggling to breathe on her own.

The brave wee girl’s ordeal began in September 2019, when she was just three months old. Not long after her mum Laurel had put Maddi down for her usual morning nap, she heard her baby screaming – a sound unlike she’d ever heard before.

Running into her daughter’s room, Laurel immediately knew something was very wrong and called 111. By the time paramedics arrived, they found a pale and limp Maddi struggling to breathe, with a puckered chest collapsed into her spine. Laurel recalls, “I had to keep calm for the other kids, but inside I was panicking, thinking, ‘This is serious.’”

On the way to the hospital, Maddi stopped breathing three times and had to have a hole drilled into her leg to get antibiotics into her bloodstream. Laurel recalls, “I felt hopeless as a mum because I couldn’t fix her pain, but I knew she was in the best hands.”

What followed was 21 months of hospital stays, medical-grade equipment filling the family home, and two parents who are now trained to a nurse level when it comes to ventilators and tracheostomies. But as Laurel says, “You do what you have to do for your kids.”

Laurel, 41, and her sales rep husband Daniel Milne, 44 – also parents to Lucy, 25, Holly, 15, and Mark, 14 – were not entirely surprised that Maddi had some health concerns. Before she was born, scans showed abnormalities in her heart that constricted her airways.