At just seven months old, Nadine Higgins’ baby boy Ari has already shown a remarkable fighting spirit. Arriving almost two months premature, he spent his first three weeks in the neonatal intensive care (NICU) before finally joining his parents and big brother Frankie at home.
A few months later, however, Ari was back in the hospital battling a serious illness. Yet through it all, this little miracle has met every challenge thrown at him – and his broadcaster mum and film producer dad Dan, who battled years of infertility, still have to pinch themselves at how lucky they are to have not one but two beautiful boys.
“It has been the most intense seven months of my life, but also the most incredible,” says Nadine, 39, as she introduces her newest little love to the Woman’s Day team.
“I look at them and find myself crying because I still can’t quite believe we ended up here.”
A long road to motherhood
A former presenter on Breakfast, 1News, Seven Sharp and The Project, Nadine’s journey to motherhood was far from simple. After marrying in 2017, she and Dan faced years of fertility struggles. They endured gruelling IVF treatments, a miscarriage, and even started the surrogacy process.
They created the award-winning podcast The Human Race, highlighting the realities of infertility. Then, against all odds, Nadine conceived naturally and welcomed their miracle son Frankie in September 2023. Just a year later, to their astonishment, she was pregnant again.
A miracle than another
“Honestly, I don’t think I’ve ever felt more shocked by anything in my life,” she admits, recalling the day she took the pregnancy test.
“I was 38, still breastfeeding Frankie, and while I know that’s no guarantee, with our history and my age, I believed the chance of me getting pregnant again was almost zero.”
An early arrival
But pregnant she was, and in March this year, Nadine and Dan’s second little miracle decided to make an early entrance into the world when his mum was 33 weeks along. Nadine, host of NZME’s The Prosperity Project podcast, had spent the previous night in Auckland Hospital. She was seeking treatment for symphysis pubis dysfunction, a pelvic condition that had left her in agony for much of her pregnancy.
“It’s also known as lightning crotch – and it was just unbearable!” she explains.
“Walking, sitting, lying down, wrangling a toddler… Everything aggravated it and the pain was just like nothing else I’ve ever felt.”
A sudden twist
After 24 hours on a ward, where doctors tried to get the pain under control, she was sent home. She was told to return the following day to see a pain specialist and a physiotherapist. But as she walked in the door, she felt her waters breaking.
Nadine recalls thinking, “I know what this is, and it’s really not meant to be happening right now.”
A frightening turn
When she phoned her midwife, she was told to return to the hospital immediately.
“It suddenly felt pretty scary,” she admits.
“I was thinking, ‘Have I caused this? Is it because I’ve been so stressed and struggling with the pain?’”
Back at the hospital, Nadine, who was experiencing mild contractions, was given drugs to delay her labour and steroid injections to help her unborn baby’s lungs develop. And by the next evening, things seemed stable, so Dan, 40, went home to get some sleep.
A dramatic arrival
A few hours later, her contractions returned. It was clear to Nadine that her little boy was on his way. They made a heroic dash to get back in time. Despite this, Dan arrived 30 seconds after little Ari was born at 2.25 am.
“The poor man thought he was coming to support me in labour,” shares Nadine.
“Yet he walked in to find me in a puddle of blood and Ari being resuscitated. I was shaking and in shock, but thankfully a midwife reassured him we were OK.”
A very different birth
Unlike Frankie’s birth, where he was placed on his mum’s chest almost immediately, Nadine’s new baby boy was not. He was taken away in an incubator to the intensive care unit.
“When I had Frankie, we had that magic hour of skin-to-skin, nuzzling and falling in love, and it was all so peaceful and serene,” she remembers.
“This time around, it was the complete opposite and it didn’t feel right. But I also knew that he was in really good hands and that’s where he needed to be.”
Meeting her tiny fighter
It would be several hours before Nadine met her baby as she’d lost a lot of blood. She admits seeing him in his incubator with tubes in his body, goggles over his eyes and under a blue “disco light” for jaundice was heartbreaking.
While doctors said 2.4kg was a good weight for a premature baby, Nadine and Dan still felt Ari was tiny, and it took some getting used to handling their precious little boy.
“I remember changing his nappy for the first time,” says Nadine.
“It was like he was made of glass because he was so tiny and delicate. But we very quickly got used to it all, learning how to take his temperature, testing the pH level in his feeding tube, expressing breast milk around the clock… It’s amazing how quickly the things that felt intimidating at the start become normal.”
Choosing a name full of meaning
After a few days, the couple decided on a name for their little boy – Ari James. Ari was chosen simply because they love how it sounds and James is Dan’s middle name.
“Ari has different meanings in different languages,” explains Nadine.
“In Hebrew, it means lion, and in Armenian, it means brave – and that seems fitting!”
Juggling NICU and home
When Nadine was discharged from the hospital on day three, she felt like her heart was breaking as she left her baby behind. For the next three weeks, she and Dan juggled their time between NICU and home before he was finally discharged. For big brother Frankie, two, it was the moment he’d been waiting for – meeting the little man he still calls “Bubba”.
Nadine smiles, “Getting a little sibling is a big development in a small person’s life, but he’s done really well and just loves his brother so much. He’s pretty obsessed with him. It’s really cute.”
Nadine concedes that having a premature baby meant the transition from one child to two has been a little harder than she’d perhaps anticipated. She found herself second-guessing her decisions, worrying more about Ari’s sleep and feeding, and the family has had some long, unsettled nights.
Balancing work and family
Added into the mix was Dan’s smash-hit film, Tinā being released, which meant he had to travel a lot in those first few months as the movie took Aotearoa and the Pacific by storm. Nadine credits their
friends and family for helping, especially Dan’s mum Anne, who lives in a tiny home on the couple’s property. “Annema”, as she is lovingly called, is a vital part of the whānau.
“She has such a beautiful bond with Frankie and I know it will be the same with Ari as he gets bigger,” Nadine shares.
A frightening health scare
While Ari is thriving now, Nadine and Dan were left terrified when he became unwell in July. What started as a cold turned into a frightening respiratory infection and when his breathing became laboured in the night, they rushed him to Auckland Starship Hospital.
Nadine believes the dash there was one of the scariest moments of her life.
“I was driving and Dan was in the back seat with him,” she tells.
“I was on the motorway and Dan told me to floor it because he was so worried about Ari’s breathing. We should have called an ambulance in hindsight.”
Ari’s battle with RSV
At Starship, the wee boy was diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus, a potentially life-threatening illness that causes infections of the respiratory tract and is particularly risky for premature babies.
The couple stayed by his side as he was monitored closely for 24 hours and despite being so unwell, Nadine says Ari was a trooper, smiling and giggling at the doctors and nurses.
“He has such a cheerful personality,” she smiles.
“Even when he was so unwell, he was still smiling.”
Recovery and gratitude
Since then, Ari has returned to health and is thriving. Nadine might be exhausted – “I’m running on fumes a little bit!” – but she feels so grateful to the universe every day for delivering these two gorgeous surprises. Life as a mum, she reckons, is beautiful.
“I’m learning to give myself the grace to acknowledge that having two little ones can be really hard at times, but I would choose this ‘hard’ a thousand times over,” she shares.
“It’s a very happy chaos and when the boys giggle together, it’s the most delicious sound in the world.”
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