My partner died the night before our wedding. Three years later, our daughter was born

Sian Goodsell's husband, Jason, was diagnosed with cancer six days after he proposed to her on a WA beach.  

Tragically he died the night before the wedding they had planned in 2019.

Three years later, Sian became pregnant through IVF using Jason's frozen sperm. This is her story.

From marriage proposal to cancer diagnosis

We were doing a lap of Australia in a camper trailer. It's something Jase had always wanted to do.

We were staying at Bunbury, in the caravan park. It was Valentine's Day and he said, "We'll go down to the beach." I said, "The bloody beach? We've been there millions of times."

We found out six days later that he had cancer. We were shocked but we had to make a plan for what to do next. So, we packed up to head straight back to Sydney.

It was a drastic change, because we were used to living the life of waking up and going to the beach at midday.

That's what we felt like doing, going snorkelling and doing all the fun things. But we got thrown back into multiple doctors' appointments and hospital admissions.

Jase had to have radiation first to shrink the tumour, because it was too big for them to operate.

We were told at one stage that he was in remission and there was no more need for chemo. But three months later they did a whole-body scan and they found that the cancer had come back — and it was bigger.

It was just devastating.

We lost Jason the night before our wedding

On the Friday before our wedding, Jason was feeling unwell and quite lethargic.

We did the rehearsal at the venue, and we decided to sign the papers and make everything official to shorten the ceremony the next day. But he passed away a few hours later.

We had everything booked in, people flying interstate for the wedding. I made a decision to still go ahead, and it turned into a celebration of love. A celebration of Jase. It was comforting for everyone to be together on one of the hardest days of our lives.

Jase and I had spoken about having children. The first time was when we were travelling Australia and we were planning the names of our future children.

It was his radiation oncologist who actually brought up the idea of freezing sperm, because radiation and chemo isn't good if you want to have children. Jase decided to go ahead with that.

Then it became a conversation about whether we would try to do IVF while he was in the middle of treatment or wait until treatment had ended.

We decided to wait because he was quite sick. Not long before our wedding, we did speak about me potentially using his sperm if he were to pass away.

My journey to become a mum

After everything Jason and I had been through in the two years when he was sick, I wanted to take a bit of time to get myself back on track and move closer to family for support. I moved into a house, spent time renovating and getting on track with my career.

Then my sister was having children, and I knew if I was going to have children, I wanted them to grow up and be close in age to my sister's kids. That's when I decided to try IVF.

It did work — on the first go. I was extremely lucky.

I hadn't told anyone I was doing IVF except my sister and one of my cousins. Even my mum didn't know. So, it was a very big surprise for everyone when I told them. I cried — all the emotions just sort of hit me all at once.

Matilda (or Tilly, as we call her) was born 17 weeks — or four months — premature. It was Boxing Day morning, and I woke up at about 3am with a bit of cramping. I just thought I'd had a big Christmas Day and I've probably overdone it.

I called my midwife and she said to come in. I turned up and they did an examination. I was actually having contractions and was fully dilated.

Welcoming baby Matilda

Tilly was born breathing, but the doctors intubated her to save her energy. She had to stay at the Grace Centre NICU, at Westmead Children's Hospital, for more than 100 days.

I was very lucky with the support that I had from my friends and my family, but it was hard because I didn't have Jason there with me. A lot of the parents there obviously had each other to lean on.

The nurses and the doctors there became my family. I take her back in to see them sometimes and all the girls there, her "aunties" as we call them. They love seeing her and how big she's gotten.

She's eight months old now. As she was born four months early, her adjusted age is four months. She's doing fantastic and doing everything that I would expect a four-month-old baby to be doing.

She looks exactly like Jason, right down to the little dimple in her bum chin that she got from him.

She raises one eyebrow and just does this cheeky little grin, which is something that I can't do — but something that Jason used to do all the time.

This article is based on an interview. Some quotes have been edited for clarity and brevity.