Baby born at 22 weeks ‘the size of a chocolate bar’ home in time for Christmas

Doctors in the United Kingdom predicted she would have “no quality of life” — but little Sussie Bea Patrick, who was born weighing just one pound and one ounce at 22 weeks and four days gestation, is now heading home from the hospital in time for her first Christmas.

Sussie’s parents, Jodie Marrin and Lee Patrick, raced to the hospital on June 27, 2018, when Marrin began feeling ill. She was just over halfway through the pregnancy and was diagnosed with sepsis.

“She was feeling unwell for about 24 hours,” Patrick told ECHO. “When it got to 11:30 pm on June 27 I said, ‘We’re going to the hospital. This isn’t right.’ She was throwing up. Within 15 minutes she was giving birth in the back of the taxi to the hospital.”

Doctors provided no hope, telling the couple to prepare to say their goodbyes to their baby girl. Just ten minutes after arriving at the hospital, Marrin gave birth.

“The said she wouldn’t be breathing for long and might not look like we expected,” Patrick told The Mirror. “They said they would let us be together as a family. She came out and gave a little whimper so they started working on her.”

Sussie was so small she was about the size of a chocolate bar and doctors didn’t plan on trying to save her life. They thought “it wasn’t worth” treating her because “she wouldn’t have a quality of life.” But her parents fought for her, saying, “that’s something that we will have to deal with but if she’s fighting we have to fight.”

Little Sussie proved to be a big fighter and after five months in the neonatal intensive care unit at Arrowe Park Hospital in Wirral, Merseyside, she is finally going home with her parents.  Sussie is still on oxygen but her father calls her his “little miracle” and says she is absolutely “perfect.”