MATER recently celebrated two milestones – the 50th birthday of Mater Mothers’ Hospitals and the birth of Samuel Ashdown.
Delivered at 2.06am on Wednesday, December 1 and weighing a healthy 4.5kg, Samuel is the fourth child of parents Louise and Colin Ashdown, of Loganholme.
Samuel is also the first baby born on Mater Mothers’ Hospitals’ milestone birthday.
Women’s Health Services director Maree Reynolds congratulated the parents and staff for delivering Mater’s “newest little miracle”.
Mater Mothers’ Hospitals have become known as leaders in the provision of high quality maternity services with more than 300,000 babies delivered at Mater throughout the past 50 years, Ms Reynolds said. “One in seven Queenslanders are born at Mater,” she said.
“Delivering these babies would not have been possible without the support of the Queensland public and our exceptional staff who made this day a reality.”
Officially opened on December 1, 1960 by Governor Sir Henry Abel Smith, the hospital’s first patients were admitted in early 1961.
The hospital’s construction was the culmination of some 14 years of fundraising by the Sisters of Mercy, with the Brisbane community donating an incredible 96 per cent of construction costs.
Fifty years on, with a new $188 million, eight-storey hospital opened in 2008, Mater Mothers’ Hospitals have a proud history of medical advancements.
These advancements include the birth of Australia’s smallest surviving baby, Jonathon Heeley who weighed a tiny 374 grams and performing Australia’s first in-utero fetal laser surgery to treat Twin to Twin Transfusion Syndrome, a major complication of an identical twin pregnancy.
In January 2008 Mater Mothers’ Hospitals also celebrated the survival of its smallest girl, Jessica Simmonds.
She weighed just 382 grams at birth and spent 117 days in hospital.
