Meet baby Miracle: Australia’s most premature newborn to survive

“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.

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’.”

“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.

“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.

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.

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.