{"id":681869,"date":"2026-01-08T09:13:23","date_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:13:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/681869\/"},"modified":"2026-01-08T09:13:23","modified_gmt":"2026-01-08T09:13:23","slug":"baby-girl-born-four-months-early-thriving-after-15-years-the-royal-gazette","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/681869\/","title":{"rendered":"Baby girl born four months early thriving after 15 years – The Royal Gazette"},"content":{"rendered":"

Created: Jan 06, 2026 07:56 AM<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Sandy and Steve Darrell with baby Julene, who was born four months early (File photograph)<\/p>\n

Julene Darrell was born so premature in 2010 that every day she lived was a miracle.<\/p>\n

She arrived in the world at about 25 weeks\u2019 old and weighed less than two pounds. She could not breathe on her own, regulate her body temperature or produce her own blood.<\/p>\n

Fifteen years later, Julene plans to enter her second semester of boarding school in the US \u2014 and hardly sees a difference between herself and her peers.<\/p>\n

\u201cEven though I was born premature, I\u2019m still like the other kids,\u201d she said. \u201cIt didn\u2019t change anything.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julene spends her time like any other teenager \u2014 she enjoys making new friends, watching school sports and occasionally helping her father, Steve, with his hobbies in video production.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Alive and well: Julene Darrell lives a happy and healthy life despite having been born after only 25 weeks (Photograph supplied)<\/p>\n

She enjoyed a stint as class president last year and now has a learning permit for a car.<\/p>\n

Julene grew up with stories of how premature she had been and the difficulties of her early infancy but did not feel defined by it.<\/p>\n

She said: \u201cEver since I was little up until now, people told me about how small I was.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey\u2019ll even pull out the baby stuff I\u2019d had and they\u2019d tell me about how I was so small that I wouldn\u2019t fit into any baby clothes so they had to dress me for dolls\u2019 clothes.\u201d<\/p>\n

Julene was born about four months early after her mother, Sandy, had complications with a dilated cervix.<\/p>\n

Sandy Darrell was expected to have an operation in the US to close her cervix and prevent a miscarriage but went through contractions at exactly 25 weeks and gave birth to Julene after about five minutes of labour.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Alive and well: Julene Darrell lives a happy and healthy life despite having been born after only 25 weeks (Photograph supplied)<\/p>\n

The Darrell family shared<\/a> their miracle experience with The Royal Gazette in 2011 and were confident their now oldest daughter would pull through.<\/p>\n

The family live in Atlanta, Georgia.<\/p>\n

During a visit to Bermuda, Mr Darrell said: \u201cI\u2019m 100 per cent proud to see her talent and skill, especially all the things that came directly from her.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said his daughter had only had one health scare in her life, when she suffered a brain bleed in December 2020 that required surgery.<\/p>\n

He explained that Julene suffered a seizure and was rushed to the hospital. Doctors discovered she had a cerebral cavernous hemangioma, a benign tumour caused by a malformation in the brain\u2019s blood vessels.<\/p>\n

Mr Darrell said this condition was not caused by her premature birth but a genetic mutation that was common on his side of the family.<\/p>\n

He explained: \u201cMy aunt, Julene Darrell, whom my daughter is named after, died of a brain aneurysm in 1998 from it.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis was before the King Edward VII Memorial Hospital had the MRI capability to detect the condition.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy mother, Lee-Ann Darrell, also had to get surgery for it in 1999 and my grandfather, Leroy Darrell, had seizures his whole life as a result of it.\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The Darrell family: Rylee, left, with Sandy, Steve Jr, Steve Sr and Julene (Photograph supplied)<\/p>\n

Mr Darrell had his family tested to confirm the condition but nothing grave has happened to Julene or the family since.<\/p>\n

Julene, their oldest, was not the last premature baby the family would welcome into the world.<\/p>\n

Their second daughter, Rylee, now aged 12, was born slightly premature, athough not as early as her big sister.<\/p>\n

Mr Darrell said that it was not until their third child \u2014 10-year-old Steve Jr \u2014 that the parents had a full-term birth.<\/p>\n

He said that because of his family\u2019s experience with managing a premature birth, he and his wife learnt to help counsel other parents who were in similar situations.<\/p>\n

He added: \u201cAs a father, I hoped to see this \u2014 but actually seeing it happen is very emotional for me.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Created: Jan 06, 2026 07:56 AM Sandy and Steve Darrell with baby Julene, who was born four months…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681870,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[11],"tags":[83512,105,609,2080,16,15],"class_list":["post-681869","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-health","tag-bermudians-abroad","tag-health","tag-human-interest","tag-infants","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115858715835403018","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681869","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681869"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681869\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681870"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681869"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681869"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681869"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}