Tears of Joy ‘I HAD TO FIGHT FOR MY BABY

TVNZ reporter Joy Reid’s precious third baby had a rough start to life, but like her proud mum, she’s a fighter!

Joy Reid has always been one to live up to her name, but the perennially upbeat journalist is the first to admit the past few months have been extremely tough. It’s only now, with four-month-old baby Annabelle in her front-pack as she jiggles her to sleep at her Christchurch home, that the mum-of-three finally feels she’s “coming up for air”.

Today, while her older children Jonny, seven, and Stella, five, are at school, Joy and her baby can finally enjoy the precious one-on-one bonding time that Annabelle’s health issues robbed them of in the days following her birth.

Jonny had a traumatic birth too and Joy’s husband Geoffrey had been gravely ill for four months following Stella’s arrival. Surely she’d catch a break third time around, thought Joy.

“I had dreams of newborn cuddles on the couch all day,” says the 1 News former European correspondent. “And it didn’t end up to be what I expected.”

Because Jonny hadn’t been breathing when he was born, Joy elected to have a Caesarean for Annabelle, who arrived on February 17, at Christchurch Hospital, weighing a very healthy 4.26kg.

Yet within minutes, the baby was experiencing respiratory problems and had started to turn blue.

“It just feels so wrong to have your baby taken off you,” says Joy, 36, of the moment doctors whisked her newborn daughter away. “I hadn’t even got to hold her and they were talking about emergency surgery.”