Billie's Breathing Battle - 456 Days in Hospital

4 September 2025

PC 14798 Gary Burgess and PC 15276 Dannii Sterling

I (Gary) am a serving police officer as well as my partner Dannii who have worked out of Folkestone Police Station for 7 and 6 years respectively.

Dannii and I met nearly 5 years ago at work, got engaged and bought 2 houses together in that time. I have two boys from a previous relationship who stay with us nearly half the time.

In June 2023, on Dannii’s birthday we found out that Dannii was pregnant and we were so excited to have a child together. We found out we were having a baby girl, which would complete the family and give my two boys a little baby sister. The pregnancy started well, but at around 21 weeks Dannii was diagnosed with severe preeclampsia and begun being carefully monitored. The preeclampsia ramped up as the weeks went by, causing Dannii to spend over 3 weeks in hospital from 24 weeks pregnant. Her blood pressure was through the roof, she could barely move due to the swelling and was very poorly.

At 27 weeks and 4 days pregnant we were told that our baby needed to be born via emergency C-Section due to concern for both hers and Dannii’s life. Billie was born on 12/11/2023 and taken straight to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit at the William Harvey hospital. She weighed just 790 grams, or 1lb 11oz. She looked like a baby bird who fell out of its nest. Our whole world turned upside down and we begun our journey in intensive care, spending every waking hour beside the incubator waiting for her to grow. It was early on that it was identified that her breathing was compromised, with her being intubated with a breathing tube and on heavy ventilator support. We found out she had a small bleed on the brain, and that her future was uncertain. At exactly 1 month old, Billie needed blue lighting to St Thomas’ Hospital in London for an emergency bowel operation, whereby she needed a portion of her bowel removed due to a bowel perforation. This was a terrifying day, we were told she may not make it and thinking of a baby as small as she was, going through such an invasive operation was unimaginable. She made it though, and had a stoma bag for a while, which was later reversed in an emergency due to her stoma’s prolapsing. Billie begun having seizures and was diagnosed with epilepsy. We spent her first Christmas in hospital, with her in a coma.

Her breathing remained the main issue, with her contracting pneumonia, needing CPR which both me and Dannii witnessed. After another operation on her heart, and multiple other tests and procedures it was identified that Billie would need a tracheostomy, so that she had a chance of coming home. This was completed in May 2025. A tracheostomy is a tube inserted in the neck, going into the airway to provide ventilation. The tracheostomy was needed due to Billie’s requirement to have long term ventilation, meaning we would be able to take her home once stable and continue to ventilate her at home. The operation was an initial success, but shortly afterwards she caught an infection and the skin around the hole the trache goes into begun to waste away. After some fantastic work from the ENT team this was managed and the infection was cleared, however a nasty scar remains. We still can’t believe she made it through this.  

The following months were filled with training so that me and Dannii were able to manage all of Billie’s Trache cares. Billie still struggled with her breathing, with this being the trickiest period of her hospital stay. Every time Billie seemed to be progressing something would happen and she would go into respiratory arrest requiring CPR. She had CPR 11 times in total during her stay in hospital, we witnessed some of these. During this time we also had to manage her seizures, which were happening regularly, up to 11 times a day, however we found a mix of medications which worked well. We had one day which was particularly bad, where Billie contracted sepsis and went into septic shock. Her organs begun to shut down and we were expecting the worst. Somehow she improved and made it through the night.

Billie spent her first birthday in hospital, with the amazing staff taking Billie to her birthday party at the Ronald McDonald house that we arranged for her with all of our family. It seemed like Billie decided that after her birthday she wanted to get better and went from strength to strength. Her seizures stopped, her breathing improved and she stopped going into arrest. After 13 months in intensive care we were moved onto a high dependency ward, where we finished our training and waited for our home care package to be sorted out, as we require nursing overnight at home.

We were discharged from hospital to home on the 10^th February 2025, 456 days after Billie was born. Billie has continued to go from strength to strength at home. She has recently begun ventilator breaks meaning that currently for 1 hour a day she is breathing by herself for the first time in her life with no ventilator support. We are hopeful that as she grows her lung and airway health continues to improve she will come off the ventilator 24/7 and one day have her tracheostomy removed. With the help of an amazing Physiotherapist Billie has begun sitting and trying to crawl, which is amazing considering she spent so much of her life sick on her back. We have been told to expect her walking within 8-9 months, something we didn’t expect any time soon.

Benevolent fund help we received

During our whole hospital stay in London we were living in the Ronald McDonald charity house, which was amazing as they gave us somewhere to stay. We of course still had our mortgage and normal bills for home to pay even though we weren’t there very much at all (apart from Saturdays where I would come and see my boys).

We have both been paying members to the benevolent fund since we started with the police, so I contacted them to see if they would be able to help us out as living in London was very expensive. I was contacted back the same day and with no hesitation the fund agreed to give us some money up front to help cover some of what we had already paid out for and agreed to pay us money every month while Billie was in hospital. This was amazing, as it allowed us to pay for and get our food at the hospital every day, paid for my fuel every Saturday to see the boys, and allowed us to get some time away from the hospital on the odd occasion for a break where me and Dannii could go for a Nando’s or something and ‘try’ to relax a little. The help we had from the fund was amazing, and it really did make our hospital stay a lot better as we didn’t have to worry about money.

Since we have been home, we have appointments in London relatively regularly and the fund have helped us out with a night in a hotel when Billie has an overnight stay, and our train ticket costs. Again this has helped us out so much and meant that some of the financial strain of having a child with complex needs can be taken away.

I am so happy that I have been paying into the benevolent fund, I never really expected to be using it but with how life has turned out it has been a huge positive in our lives and helped us out so much. I would advise everyone to pay into the fund, as you never know what life is going to throw at you and when you may need it.

Thank you to the benevolent fund for giving me and Dannii the help you have given us, especially during our hospital stay, as you helped us stay fed and as fresh as possible, which in turn helped us get Billie better.