The Liggins Institute: human connections

Whitney Daniela always wanted a big family. Her mum is one of 12; she grew up surrounded by aunties, uncles and cousins.

She assumed building her own whānau would be easy; it seemed her body had other ideas.

Tragically, her first baby was stillborn, her second pregnancy ended in a miscarriage, and Whitney’s pregnancy with her eldest daughter, now nine-year-old Jordan, started going seriously wrong at 24 weeks – a time when a baby’s survival hangs in the balance. Two weeks of supervised bed rest got her through to 26 weeks, when Jordan was born.

The new family went through tough times, including eight weeks with Jordan in Starship’s neonatal intensive care unit, and difficulties during subsequent pregnancies.

You’d never know it to witness life today at the Auckland home of Whitney, husband Danny and their daughters Jordan, Marlee (6) and new baby Dillon.

“Life with three girls is a crazy thing for every parent, but my life with three ‘miracle’ babies is something I always dreamed of,” says Whitney. “My journey was different with each daughter, and each outcome is definitely different. But having my girls healthy and thriving is nothing but a miracle.”

Front and centre throughout this journey, says Whitney, is Professor Katie Groom – obstetrician, researcher and passionate advocate for better knowledge and care around preterm birth.  

Katie is a senior clinician at Auckland City Hospital, researcher at the Liggins Institute, and founding member of the Carosika Collaborative, which is hosted at the institute and works to provide the best outcomes for babies at risk of preterm birth or born preterm with a focus on equity for all whānau.

Katie was the doctor who led the Auckland team guiding Whitney through the crucial extra two weeks of pregnancy after 24 weeks – enough time for Daniela to receive steroid injections that would boost baby Jordan’s lungs in utero. She subsequently helped Whitney and Danny through two more high-risk, but ultimately successful pregnancies.

And in her role as a professor, Katie gave Whitney and Danny a sense of the importance of research to improve preterm birth outcomes for future babies and their families; all their daughters have been involved in Liggins Institute research studies.

“It feels like we are making a difference,” says Whitney. “Women just don’t know about preterm birth – it isn’t talked about in Māori and Pacific families. Some people don’t have access to doctors.

“I want people to know preterm birth can happen, and that it’s okay. It’s not so scary once you get there, and there are things you can do and that doctors can do to make it better.”

From 'steroid baby' to Liggins Institute researcher

To encourage more clinicians to consider research, the Liggins Institute established its Clinical Research Internships programme in 2019, open to second- and third-year medical students.

In an extraordinary coincidence, one of the programme’s first two first interns was Dr Gordon Liu, a twin born healthy at about 32 weeks after his mum was treated with Mont Liggins’ revolutionary steroid treatment.

Gordon, who is now a registrar at Auckland City Hospital, says he didn’t know anything about his mum’s experience until he told her he was taking up the internship.  

The opportunity was incredibly valuable, he says, teaching him the basics of research: conceptualising questions; data collection, cleaning and analysis; publication and presentation.

It’s also led to his continued interest in research.

“In clinical practice the big thing now is obviously evidence-based medicine and trying to make sure that our care remains up to date, in line with published research. So an initiative like the Liggins Institute, where the focus is on conducting clinical research, is directly applicable to what we do in practice.”

– Nikki Mandow and Lesley Springall