Danielle Nickoll had no idea she was even pregnant until moments before she was put into a coma for severe swine flu. The Sydney mum tells Katherine Chatfield how she awoke to the biggest, and happiest, shock of her life.
Danielle Nickoll kisses her daughter Sienna and laughs as the 12-week-old shows a gummy smile back. Danielle clearly dotes on her baby, but she’s had a tough introduction to becoming a mum.
Amazingly, the 21-year-old from Ryde, in Sydney’s north-west, didn’t know she was expecting until she went to hospital after finding it hard to breathe. Doctors diagnosed her with swine flu – and told her she was 33 weeks pregnant.
Moments later, she fell into a coma, and Sienna was born by caesarean while her mum was still unconscious.
“If doctors hadn’t got her out, we both would have died,” says Danielle. “It’s amazing we’re both here and healthy.”
Being told she was expecting came as a shock to Danielle, because her GP had previously told her she wasn’t pregnant.
“I’d been to the doctor because I was worried my periods had stopped,” she says. “She told me it was because I was overweight. I started to go to the gym five days a week and she gave me diet pills, too. I didn’t look pregnant, so I accepted what she’d told me.”
Then, in July, Danielle started to feel ill. “I thought it was just a bad cold,” she says. “But I was having difficulty breathing and walking, so my sister took me to hospital.”
Doctors soon realised how ill Danielle was, and quarantined her. Swine flu tests came back positive – and so did a pregnancy test.
“I was shocked, but felt so ill I didn’t really know how to react,” she says. “I was very worried because I’d been taking diet pills, as well as cold and flu medication, for weeks, which could have harmed the baby.”
Danielle’s boyfriend Curtis, 26, couldn’t believe it when his girlfriend of three years told him she was pregnant.
“We’d always wanted kids, but we were planning on waiting a while!” he says.
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