Susie Maroney's emergency birth

Only days before the birth of her beautiful new baby, a smiling Susie Maroney softly confides: ‘I’m so lucky, I can’t believe my life has changed so much. Everyone is so happy.’

But the 35-year-old’s joy was about to become even more intense with the arrival of gorgeous daughter Capri, who rushed into the world a week early on September 1 at Sydney’s Sutherland Hospital.

The marathon swimmer’s proud husband Darren May, who married her in a fairytale ceremony on Easter Sunday earlier this year, can’t stop grinning – and Susie’s two-year-old daughter Paris is overjoyed to have a little sister at last.

‘She’d been holding my stomach and feeling the baby kick, so she knew what was going on,’ laughs Australia’s long-distance sweetheart. ‘She could hardly wait for the baby to be born.’

Glowing with contentment, the doting mum can’t believe how much her life has changed from the sea of sorrows in her past. She’s suffered the loss of two unborn babies, the death of her adored twin brother Sean and the breakdown of her marriage to Rob Daniels only weeks before little Paris was born in June 2008.

‘I was all by myself in the late stages of my last pregnancy, and I was heartbroken,’ says Susie, who rewrote the record books by swimming from Cuba to Florida and Mexico to Cuba. ‘Now everything is completely different because I have love around me, which I didn’t have before. It’s the most amazing feeling.’

But storms continued even after meeting her ‘soulmate’ Darren – a 41-year-old furniture maker – on a blind date in Sydney’s beachside suburb of Cronulla, and diving into an engagement only eight weeks later.

Within days of going public with her passion for the divorced father-of-two, a newspaper revealed that he had served two separate jail terms – most recently for breaching an AVO and assaulting his then-estranged wife’s new partner.

Darren was promptly branded a ‘violent stalker’ who’d trapped single mother Susie into a too-hasty marriage by getting her pregnant almost immediately.
‘It was so hurtful,’ she recalls. ‘I used to wonder how much more I could be put through. I lost Sean and had some really tough times being a single mother – and then people said such nasty things.

‘I have no regrets at all. I know Darren has been in trouble but he’s wonderful – everything I ever could have wanted. It’s just amazing how you can meet someone and know he’s perfect.

‘Every night while I was pregnant Darren cooked and cleaned. He just did everything and it was such a shock. I have never, ever had someone who is so nice to me and so caring. He even painted my toenails last week when I couldn’t reach them! I know it’s sickening, but true. Darren is so excited and he’s a great dad. That’s what I love about him most – he’s so gentle with all the girls. I just can’t fault him, and he makes me a better person too.’

At her lowest ebb, broken-hearted Susie doubted that she would ever meet a man again. In fact she was so convinced of her loveless future, she sold all of Paris’ old baby gear.

‘I thought I would always be alone after Rob and I split up. I certainly never thought I’d have another child – so I didn’t even have a bassinet, let alone a pram or a change table,’ she chuckles.

‘Darren had to go out and buy everything we needed to equip the nursery for the baby!’
With two daughters of her own – plus weekend visits from Darren’s girls Tiarne, 15, and Brielle, 13 – Susie will have her hands full. ‘We’re like the Brady Bunch,’ she says.

‘Now we even have quite a good relationship with Darren’s ex-wife Kylie. I wrote her a letter telling her how lovely her daughters are. I think that broke the ice. Life’s too short to argue. Everything should revolve around the children’s happiness.’

By: Jenny Brown