BORN AT 23 WEEKS! - Maverick is OUR LITTLE MIRACLE

PARENTS COURTNEY AND RHYS ARE SO PROUD OF THEIR COURAGEOUS FIGHTER

- Rosie Erickson

Courtney and Rhys Matulis were over the moon to learn they were expecting their beautiful son, who they named Maverick. He was a rainbow baby, after the Victorian couple lost their first child, daughter Savannah Jane, to miscarriage at 18 weeks.

But little Maverick had a tough start to life, and his doting parents almost lost him without getting the chance to say goodbye.

Courtney and Rhys welcomed Maverick at 23 weeks and five days gestation. He was just 2cm longer than a ruler and weighed the same as a loaf of bread.

“I look back at photos and think, ‘Wow, you were actually that small’,” Courtney tells New Idea.

Courtney was on her first day of maternity leave and having lunch with colleagues when labour began.

“One of the girls said to me, ‘Court, look down. Your feet are bright red.’ I’d had a massive bleed,” Courtney says.

Once at the hospital, doctors tried to stop the birth from progressing, but it was too late. Maverick arrived. His odds of survival were 60 per cent.

“Even though we were told he only had a six in 10 chance of living, I made the executive decision to get him out,” Courtney says.

Because he was so small, Maverick was rushed to the NICU ward to be incubated, while Courtney herself was unconscious and incredibly unwell. Poor Rhys was terrified he might lose both his wife and newborn child.