At least outwardly, she was a happy, healthy baby girl. 

But on her seventh day of life, something went seriously wrong.

At 9.50am on February 14, Valentine’s Day, Mia’s dad Cody took older sister Maddison, 3, to swimming lessons. 

About 20 minutes later Mia’s mum Kelly Jo went to check on her newborn daughter and discovered the week-old infant had stopped breathing.

Mia had been asleep in her swing. 

“I felt her and she was warm but I had a strange feeling that told me to listen because she just didn’t look right,” Kelly Jo said.

“I couldn’t hear any breathing at all. I grabbed her out of the swing and ran into the street screaming for help.” 

The Walls had moved to the area only days previously and Kelly Jo was yet to even meet her neighbours.

“It was a Saturday so a whole heap of people came rushing out their front doors,” Kelly Jo said.

“A man in blue started CPR on Mia and someone else got straight on the phone to call an ambulance.”

It was 10 minutes until paramedics arrived and another 30 until Mia was placed in the back of an ambulance.

Mia’s heart started finally started beating again while the ambulance was en-route to Mount Isa Base Hospital.

At the hospital, Mia was placed on a respirator and was then airlifted by the Royal Flying Doctor Service to Townsville where doctors performed an echocardiogram.

The doctors told Cody and Kelly Jo that Mia had suffered a cardiac arrest due to an undiagnosed heart condition that meant part of her aorta was narrower than it should be. 

“Instead of the arch in Mia’s aorta being 1cm wide as is the norm, it was only 3mm,” Kelly Jo said.

“On the seventh day of life the ventricles in a baby’s heart close and the aorta takes over pumping the blood. Because Mia’s arch was only 3mm wide the blood flow stopped, causing the cardiac arrest.” 

From Townsville, Mia was flown to Brisbane’s new children’s hospital, the Lady Cilento Hospital at South Brisbane, where doctors placed a stent in her aorta to try and get the blood flowing properly around her body.

“They hoped it would give them a two-week window before they would have to operate but it didn’t quite go to plan,” Kelly Jo said.

So, on Mia’s 14th day of life, she had open heart surgery to repair the arch in her aorta. 

Mia spent several weeks in intensive care before being moved to the ward and released. Kelly Jo and Cody, who both grew up in Gloucester, have returned home to be closer to family. 

Doctors have called Mia a miracle baby.

“The survival rate for someone having a heart attack without knowing and surviving is four per cent, let alone being a baby with an undiagnosed heart condition,” Kelly Jo said.

“There is a five per cent chance Mia will need surgery again.” 

Mia has recently come off her nasal gastric tube and has started to get into a normal routine, but will continue to need specialist treatment at hospital in Newcastle.

Kelly Jo said she was extremely thankful to neighbours, paramedics and emergency services and doctors, for saving her baby’s life. 

“It just shows how important it is to know CPR and how it can save a life.”