A baby who was born two months early has defied the odds—after being so small she had to wear doll’s clothing.
Sienna Townsend, now 4, arrived weighing 3 pounds, 3 ounces, and mom Gemma Townsend, 33, had to dress her in clothes for a Baby Annabell doll when she came home after six weeks in the hospital.
Ms. Townsend gave birth to her second premature baby, Amelia, now 15 months old, in June 2022, eight weeks early, weighing the exact same as her sister.
The mom was even told to “say goodbye” after Amelia struggled to recover from a collapsed lung.
Miraculously, the tot pulled through after being put in a coma for seven days and spending two months in the hospital.
She was able to come home in August 2022 to join her sister, Sienna—and the pair are now both thriving.
“Both were born early at exactly 31 weeks and 3 days and 3 pounds, 1 ounce each—which is really weird,” said Ms. Townsend, a support worker from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, the UK.
“Sienna was so small she had to wear baby Annabell clothes, as there was nothing else out there for her.
“They said, ‘You need to come in a say goodbye’ [to Amelia].
“We were told she was dying.
“I couldn’t believe she made it.
“Sienna is besotted with her.”
Ms. Townsend found out she had protein in her urine and was diagnosed with preeclampsia at 28 weeks with Sienna—and was hospitalized up until her birth.
Sienna was born via cesarian section at Gloucestershire Royal Hospital at 5:15 p.m. on Oct. 31, 2018, when Ms. Townsend’s blood pressure shot up, and she was at risk of a seizure.
Ms. Townsend and her husband, Jamie Townsend, 36, who works in IT, were scared to hold their daughter, as she was so frail.
“It was horrible,” she said. “She was so frail and small.”
The day after giving birth, Ms. Townsend was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome—a rare liver and blood clotting disorder—and she was kept in the hospital for three weeks while she recovered.
Ms. Townsend was hardly able to see little Sienna, but after they both recovered, she was able to bring her tiny daughter home—then weighing 4 pounds, 3 ounces, in December 2018.
Sienna is now a thriving 4-year-old who is “nervous and anxious.”
When Ms. Townsend fell pregnant again with Amelia, she was told to take aspirin to help stop her from developing pre-eclampsia, but she was diagnosed again at 28 weeks.
“It was the exact same, it followed the same pattern,” she said.
Ms. Townsend was admitted to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital in April 2022 and was taken for a C-section in June when her blood pressure got too high.
Little Amelia was born at 2:20 p.m. on June 17, 2022, weighing 3 pounds, 1 ounce, but at 3 days old, doctors noticed her lungs were undeveloped and like that of a 28-week-old baby.
When Amelia was 7 days old, the hospital called to say she had taken a turn, and Mr. and Ms. Townsend were told to “say goodbye.”
“The ventilator wasn’t working for her,“ she said. “It was so traumatic.”
Ms. Townsend was told she had a collapsed right lung caused by an over-inflated left lung—a pneumothorax—that wasn’t healing, and specialist doctors had been called to see if they could save her.
The team managed to arrive in an hour and operated on her in her incubator in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU)—attempting to stabilize her.
They succeeded after seven hours, and she was then taken in an ambulance to Bristol Royal Hospital for Children.
Amelia’s lung was causing pressure on her heart—which was “really serious”—and doctors battled to save her for two weeks, but nothing was working.
They decided to put her in a coma on her left side to get her lung working.
“She became really distorted. Her head was massive,” Ms. Townsend said. “She was really uncomfortable looking.
“We were told to prepare for the worst.”
On day seven, her heart started inflating, and the pressure on it decreased, and doctors were able to wake Amelia up.
Within five days she started getting better and was then moved back to Gloucestershire Royal Hospital.
“We couldn’t believe it,” Ms. Townsend said.
Amelia came home without oxygen in August 2022 and is going from strength to strength but is very behind on her milestones—she’s only just started crawling.
Her parents don’t yet know what the impact of her NICU stay will have on her but hope she'll be able to walk.
“She’s so fierce,” Ms. Townsend said. “She has incredible strength.
“She’s determined—that’s what got her through.”
For both her daughters, Ms. Townsend used donor milk, which she is very thankful for—and they are thriving.
