Queanbeyan miracle baby's next milestone

But Queanbeyan's miracle baby, Natalie Webb-Searle, will celebrate her 40th birthday on Sunday, having beaten all the odds.

The story of the Queanbeyan couple with the 850-gram baby was covered nationally in 1975, and the Women's Weekly, The Sydney Morning Herald and the Canberra Times all reported on the remarkable story of Queanbeyan's miracle baby, born 14 weeks premature.

It defied medical science at the time. Natalie spent her first two months of life in a humidicrib, and babies as premature as she was in those days almost always came through the experience either blind or brain damaged, if they made it at all.

However Natalie is now a happy, healthy mother of two boys, and celebrated her 15th wedding anniversary this month.

Her father, Bevan Webb, still recalls those terrifying days in early 1975, when he and wife Jill were anxiously waiting for their first child to be released from intensive care.

"Jill had to spend virtually the whole time she was pregnant with Natalie in bed. And because she wasn't doing that well, they took her into the Canberra Hospital around the six month mark, and a week later, Natalie was born.

"She looked like a skinned rabbit. She was so tiny," Mr Webb recalls.

The fact that the couple had become pregnant at all was a miracle in itself. Bevan's wife Jill had undergone abdominal surgery in her early 20s and had part of her stomach and an ovary removed. It took ten years for them to become pregnant with Natalie, and doctors at the Canberra Hospital were careful to warn them that their baby stood next to no chance of survival.

What's more, baby Natalie had an alarming habit where she'd stop breathing after feeds and needed to be resuscitated on several occasions.

"I used to be ringing the specialist every day for an update," Mr Webb said. "He couldn't give me a definitive answer. He just kept saying 'we'll have to wait and see.'"

However Natalie pulled through the ordeal, and the Webbs went on to have a second daughter, Letitia.

On the eve of her 40th birthday, Natalie says it's hard to relate to the 'miracle' tag she carried during the very early years of her life.

"I don't really see myself like that so much. When you hear about premature babies, I kind of understand, and when I'm with family they'll sometimes mention that it was a miracle.

"But it's harder for people to relate to it these days. It's pretty normal for [premature] babies to live now.

"These days I'm about as normal as they come," she said.