When Leah Goulis put her two children to bed on a Friday night last month, it was like any other Friday.
The kids came home from school, enjoyed Macca’s for dinner as a special treat, and chatted to their friends on their iPads while the footy was on and everyone hung out.

Once it was time for bed, Leah’s daughter Madeleine (Maddie), 12, said “Good night, Mum. Love you, see you in the morning,” as she did every night. Tragically, these were some of the last words the year six student would say to her mother before the unthinkable happened.

The next morning, on August 1, Maddie suffered a sudden brain haemorrhage and was rushed to hospital for emergency surgery. What her mum did in those moments before paramedics arrived at their Sydney home ultimately saved her daughter’s life.

“She went to bed fine. We told each other we would see each other in the morning,” Leah, a respected news.com.au journalist, told this publication exclusively.

The mum-of-two said she heard someone fussing in the hallway at about 5am the next morning. She then heard Maddie say she didn’t feel well and “needed to vomit.”

“So I quickly got up and ran to her and she was running from her bedroom to vomit. I said, ‘it’s OK I’ll hold your hair back’,” the 44-year-old recalled.

“She was complaining that her head was sore … and then it looked like she fainted.”

12-year-old Maddie suffered a sudden brain haemorrhage on August 1. Picture: Leah Goulis/news.com.au

Her mother, Leah, performed lifesaving CPR on her daughter until paramedics arrived. Picture: Leah Goulis/news.com.au
At this point Leah called out to her husband, Jerry, and the couple quickly put their daughter onto her bed. It didn’t take long for her mother to realise that something was very wrong, so she called triple-0.