MIGHTY MAHLIA!

Danielle's girl survived despite all expectations, now she's helping others

- Danielle Walker

It's not going to happen,' I sighed to my husband Roger, then 38. 'Let's sell all the baby stuff.' 

We'd been trying for two years to have a sibling for our daughter Lilah, then four, without success. Following a diagnosis of 'unexplained infertility', we were calling it a day.

Then, just after we sold our baby gear, to our joy, I discovered I was pregnant. At five-and-a-half weeks along, however, I began haemorrhaging.

'It's highly unlikely this little one will make it The s Coke c fit into my E earthside,' the doctor warned.

I wept, distraught.

Despite bleeding daily, our baby, a little girl, held on.

At 18 weeks I was put on hospital bed rest. She was so tiny she was barely visible on ultrasound.

'She'll need to weigh 500 grams to be viable, and it doesn't look like she'll reach that,' the doctor said. There's also hardly any fluid around her. It's unlikely she'll even survive delivery.'

Roger and I tried to prepare ourselves, but it was devastating.

Somehow, though, she hung on and in February 2020, at 24 weeks, I went into spontaneous labour, and our precious Mahlia Violet came silently into the world via C-section.

At just 420 grams - 80g short of her viable weight - she was a micro premmie. The size of a can of Coke she could fit into the palm of one hand.

'Don't take her away. Let her pass away with us,' I begged doctors tearfully.

But Mahlia had other plans. Instead of dying, she battled to survive and was  whisked into NICU.

There's no way she can make it,' doctors warned, but nobody told Mahlia that.