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“I took one look at her and I was like, ‘there’s no way she’s going to make it’,” remembers Annrose Tunavasa of the day she met her baby girl.
In the living room of their Logan Reserve home, 35 kilometres south of Brisbane, she and her husband Misi cradle their four-month-old daughter in their arms.
Makerita Miracle Tanuvasa has already broken records, defied modern medical standards, and left doctors in awe. But her proud parents are just grateful she has survived.
“It was just like she was here to fight,” says mum Annrose.
On March 20, Annrose visited her GP. She had just completed a six-week gym challenge, but dropped little weight, and suspected she may be four or five weeks pregnant.
“I went to do an ultrasound and the sonographer told us that we were about 22 weeks pregnant,” she remembers. “I said ‘that’s impossible’.”
Annrose explained that she had suffered a miscarriage in December.
“She said, ‘Well, maybe you had a twin, and you miscarried the twin … you’ve got to go to the hospital and you’ll be staying there until you give birth.’”
Five days later, Annrose gave birth at the Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital at 7:08pm.
Her middle name says it all. Miracle, as she is now affectionately known, measured 30.5 centimetres upon arrival and weighed just 351 grams, making her the tiniest newborn in Queensland history.
Her weight was some 23 grams less than Australia’s Coke Can Kid, Jonathon Heeley, who was born in 1992 and famously drew comparisons to the size of the soft drink.
Father Misi said his daughter was about the size of his palm. “We weren’t able to hold her, but she was very, very small,” he says.
She was so small, clinicians were left perplexed.
“A week later the doctor came in to see me, and she said, ‘She’s just not matching the scans that you came in with, she doesn’t match that baby’,” Annrose explains.
“I was measuring at 500 grams, measuring at 22 weeks pregnant.”
Annrose was asked to retrieve the scans she had completed prior to her miscarriage in December, which showed her baby was even more premature than first thought.
“They said, this has got to be the same pregnancy.”
Doctors told the couple Miracle was in fact born at 21 weeks and 3 days – so premature that resuscitation usually is not an option.
The revelation means she is not only Queensland’s smallest baby, but also believed to be the most premature in Australia to live.
Previously, that was baby Stevie O’Reilly, born at 22 weeks and two days at Townsville University Hospital in July last year.
The Guinness World Records recognises Iowa toddler Nash Keen, born at exactly 21 weeks in July 2024, as the most premature baby to survive worldwide.
“Even the doctors couldn’t explain how she was able to survive everything she’s gone through,” says Misi.
Annrose nods. “She said, we can’t give you any answers. Everything is actually just a miracle. And I just said, ‘well, let’s keep it like that’.”
Following her frantic delivery, Annrose and Misi spent the next month whispering to their daughter from behind the glass facade of a neonatal intensive care incubator.
Miracle was covered head to toe in tubes and cables as a mighty, multidisciplinary team of health care workers kept a watchful eye over her.
Four weeks into her life, the then petrified parents were finally able to hold their precious girl.
“It was magical, but it was also very scary, holding such a tiny baby,” says Annrose.
Miracle made the RBWH’s intensive care unit her home for 14 weeks.
After six weeks, Annrose moved into Herston’s Ronald McDonald House and she and Misi juggled parenting their two other children, aged 1 and 4, with monitoring their growing newborn.
“Every visit, it was like real quiet, like almost like no one wanted to tell us, ‘we don’t know if she’s going to survive or not’,” Annrose recalls.
“But I think after one month, it just started to get real bright in the room.”
Eventually, Miracle was transferred to Logan Hospital’s special care nursery.
She was discharged in early August, more than four months after she was born and at what would have marked 40 weeks gestation.
“I haven’t seen a 21-plus-three-weeker,” says registered nurse Renee Judd.
“We’ve had other little babies here, but not that young, and I have been 16 years in the neonatal journey in Logan.”
The nurses and midwives who cared for her formed a guard of honour as Annrose carried her daughter from the facility – remarkably, without an oxygen tank.
Annrose and Misi teared up as they thanked the healthcare heroes who kept Miracle alive.
“Thank you guys so much for all the love and care you gave our daughter, the nurses, the doctors, the cleaners … social workers, Ronald McDonald House in Herston. Thank you guys so much for everything.”
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Abbey Geran is a reporter for 9News Queensland.Connect via X.
