21st birthday celebration as Nunthorpe girl Melissa Fishlock - born at 22 and a half weeks weighing just 1lb 3.5 ozs - comes of age
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Like most other young women, Melissa Fishlock has a week of celebrations lined up for her 21st birthday.
But doctors didn’t think she would ever make it home to see her first birthday after she was born on on March 1, 1993, weighing just one pound and three and a half ounces.
She was born premature at 22 and a half weeks, alongside her twin brother Nathan, after her mum Ann Marshall had been put into an induced coma when she reacted badly to a drug given to stop contractions.
Tragically Nathan, who was 1lb 1oz when he was born, only survived for nine hours.
Ann came around from her coma five days later and, with the support of her family, watched Melissa battle every day in hospital for three months.
And now, more than two decades later, Melissa and her proud family are ready to celebrate her 21st birthday in style.
“Everybody called her a miracle baby,” said mum Ann, 48. “There is no other way to describe it.
“The doctors didn’t think any of us would come home. The priest even came out to the hospital. But here Melissa is now, 21 years later. We’re all incredibly proud of her.
“When she was in hospital, she was so tiny and her skin was almost transparent. You could see her heart beating. She was so small that we had to buy dolls’ clothes and we had clothes made for her.
“She has just done amazingly well. She sits here like the rest of us, but you can’t imagine how hard she battled. She has a big scar from surgery, she had operations on her eyes because her retinas were becoming detached, and doctors thought she might have had cerebral palsy.
“But I want to shout about her from the rooftops. We are biased because she’s ours, but she is amazing.”
Melissa, who went to Nunthorpe School in Middlesbrough and Prior Pursglove College in Guisborough, is modest and says she gets a bit embarrassed by the praise - but her nana and grandad, Shirley and Brian Marshall, think the Northumbria University student is worth it.
Shirley said: “She’s just fantastic. The whole family thinks so, we are just as proud of her as we can be.
“It was very difficult at the time. Ann was in a coma for five days and didn’t know anything about what had happened. She woke up the day before Nathan’s funeral. We all cried for a week. But we kept going for Melissa and look at her now.
“Academically, she couldn’t be doing better. She works as a lifeguard in Jesmond and works at Newcastle Football Club. She’s wonderful.”
Melissa is in Newcastle for university but lives in Nunthorpe with mum Ann and dad Stephen when she is home and is the youngest child - she has a sister Amy, 26, and brother Lee, 28.
When she left Middlesbrough’s South Cleveland Hospital, now James Cook, in 1993, nurses lined up to say goodbye and her dad hired a Rolls Royce to take her home.
And while she doesn’t remember it, she’s seen the video quite a few times. “The nurses are all lined up either side, just for me,” said Melissa. “I went back to the hospital when I was 18 and a lot of the same staff were there. One of them was looking at me as if she knew me, but I thought I might have looked a bit different then!”
Like most 21-year-olds, Melissa says she is excited about her birthday - but she’s dreading having to hand in her dissertation for her degree in sports development with coaching.
But she is aware of how far she has had to come.
“I don’t think about it all that much, but I think I’ve come out of it all right. A scar and a bit of trouble with my eye and that’s it!”
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