Proud parents have told the story of how they were terrified their daughter with a heart defect wouldn’t make it through last Christmas.

Elodie Older, who has just turned one, was due on December 25, 2019 – but was born early with potentially life-threatening health problems.

Yet the ‘miracle baby’ defied the odds to spend her first Christmas at home this year.

Mum Jess, 37, told Metro.co.uk that everything went well with her pregnancy until her 20-week scan.

She said: ‘I just remember someone drawing pictures of a heart with arrows saying, “normal heart” and “your baby’s heart”. I really wasn’t taking any of it in at all.

‘We were asked if we had any questions and I just blurted out, “Is she going to live?”

‘Nothing was really registering with me. I was in shock and I was only hearing odd words like surgery and survival rates.’

The parents, of Pembury in Kent, were told Elodie had a rare congenital heart disease called Tetralogy of Fallot, which meant she had four structural abnormalities which would require surgery.

Jess had weekly scans to keep an eye on Elodie, but they had more scary news as the mum, who works as a senior manager in resourcing for PwC, reached eight months of pregnancy.

Elodie was diagnosed with another condition which meant there was an abnormal connection between the lower part of her oesophagus and her trachea, and would need immediate surgery after birth to correct it so she could swallow properly.

‘I was scared she wouldn’t be coming out alive’

‘At that point I think I lost it a little bit, I was supposed to go to work that day and just messaged my boss to say I wasn’t coming in,’ said Jess.

‘I went to see my GP and just sat and cried. I was really scared then that she wouldn’t be coming out alive, that she might not be strong enough to survive all this.

‘We were told that the odds of a baby having both conditions were incredibly rare.’

She said she wouldn’t have been able to get through it without Elodie’s ‘amazing and positive’ dad, Russell.

Despite her due date of Christmas Day, Jess was induced a little early at Evelina London Children’s Hospital and Elodie was born at 4.20pm on December 17, 2019.

‘She was tiny – just over five pounds – and didn’t cry at first,’ she said.

‘But then she was handed to me for about 10 seconds before she had to be whisked away and, in that moment, she opened her eyes, looked straight at me and cried.’

Elodie was taken straight to the neonatal care unit before her surgery the next day – but things didn’t work out as expected.

‘We spent Christmas Day in shock’

Her parents were told she’d got an infection which had turned into pneumonia, and one of her lungs was collapsing.

Then at 4.30am on Christmas Day they were called and asked to go straight to the hospital as her other lung had started to collapse and she wasn’t responding to treatment.

‘They said she was working too hard to breathe on her own and it was taking it out of her,’ added Jess, ‘Then they just said they were going to put her in an induced coma on a ventilator and let her body try to recover.

‘We spent Christmas day in shock just staring at her.

‘What made it worse was that other parents had come in to see their babies who had been born prematurely but not very very sick like Elodie, and then were leaving to go home.

‘And then we had to listen to people singing carols outside and it just made everything so much worse. I just wanted them all to go away.’

Miraculously Elodie’s lungs started to improve after 24 hours and she was brought out of her induced coma. Jess got to hold her daughter for the first time on New Year’s Eve.

Elodie stayed in hospital throughout January to prepare for her to go home, but towards the end of the month Jess was sat holding her when she looked down and saw her baby had ‘turned deathly white’.

Her oxygen levels had dropped to 40% and she needed emergency open heart surgery.

‘It just felt like we’d gone backwards – it was such a huge shock as just days before we’d been gearing up for her finally coming home,’ said Jess.

‘She started to recover well. But it was horrendous to see her little body hooked up to all these drains and a ventilator.’

Elodie was finally discharged and went home on Valentine’s Day this year, subject to yearly heart check-ups.

Although she still has problems with her airways and is due surgery in the next few years to try and help with this, Elodie is due to start nursery in January and Jess will return to work – so the family are looking forward to the future.

‘To look at Elodie you’d never know what she’s been through, she’s such a happy little girl and is fascinated by seeing a Christmas tree for the first time,’ said Jess, who added her daughter has been called ‘miracle baby’ by family and friends.

‘When I look at her, I’m just filled with pride at how she has fought to be here and how far she has come.’

The family celebrated her first birthday last week and say they are ‘so grateful’ to have her home.

‘When we look at Elodie now we just cannot believe how far she’s come since last Christmas when we thought we wold lose her,’ the mum concluded.

‘Russell and I have decided that for her first Christmas at home we just want to have some quiet time with her.

‘We want to celebrate what we didn’t have last year and what we thought we may never have.’

Jess and Russell are supporting the British Heart Foundation’s Christmas Campaign so others like Elodie will benefit from its lifesaving research in the future. The devastating impact of the Covid-19 pandemic means the BHF’s investment in new research will fall by around £50 million this year – the toughest period in its 60-year history. You can donate to the BHF this Christmas here.

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