Oh, baby it's been tough MY DAUGHTERS ARE ALL FIGHTERS

After a five-year stint in hospital with her girls, Tiff found love again and welcomed a son. But her latest birth brought back her old fears

- Fleur Guthrie

As little Kenzie McLeod sleeps contentedly in her big sister Eva’s arms, she’s blissfully unaware of the joy – and the drama – her first week of life has brought her smitten family.

Usually open to documenting their highs and lows on social media, mum Tiff, 38, couldn’t bring herself to share about Kenzie’s dramatic delivery earlier this month for fear of what other people might think.

Her eldest daughter Mela, 15, had recently suffered a serious back injury and Eva, who had almost died when she was born 13 years ago, was also sick.

“So,” explains Tiff, “it felt like we had this constant run of chaos and I didn’t want people going, ‘What is this woman doing, having sick kid after sick kid?’ I didn’t want to share what had really happened to our baby.”

In the lead-up to Kenzie’s planned Caesarean section delivery, Tiff’s obstetrician had warned her and her husband Jason, 41, that all babies born via C-section were at risk of having extra fluid on their lungs, but the couple wasn’t fazed.

Yet, as Kenzie was born, this proved to be the case. As soon as she was pulled from the womb, she was struggling to breathe and the newborn has whisked away for what seemed like an eternity as medics tried to suction the fluid from her lungs.

Says Tiff, “I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ I could feel something was wrong, but everyone was so busy working on Kenzie that they didn’t have time to explain.”

For the mum-of-four, the touch-and-go delivery brought back some heartbreaking memories.