Sarah Bramston was 28-weeks pregnant with daughter Aurora when she felt "something wasn't right", and presented to Dubbo hospital with a fever.

After two days receiving treatment for a suspected urinary tract infection (UTI), her doctor considered sending her home. Luckily for Sarah and her baby, he didn't.

That afternoon she started bleeding before her waters broke. The doctors thought Sarah had a placenta abruption - quite common around 28-weeks gestation - and prepped her for surgery.

"By this stage my pain had increased phenomenally, and they ended up losing her heart rate on the CTG," Sarah said.

"They rushed me down to theatre...and when the doctor actually cut me open, Aurora was out in my abdominal cavity.

"She wasn't in my uterus at all, she was just covered in blood and she wasn't breathing."

Sarah had had an uterine rupture - almost unheard of among women without scar tissue from a previous uterine surgery or caesarean section. She'd lost 1.8 litres of blood.

Aurora was resuscitated and flown to Royal Prince Alfred (RPA) hospital's Neo-natal Intensive Care Nursery (NICU). Sarah and her partner Daniel spent seven weeks in Sydney, where Aurora was "touch and go", before coming home in June.

Now eight-months-old, or five-months corrected, Aurora is healthy and meeting development milestones for her corrected age.

Sarah hopes sharing her story will encourage other women to trust their instincts.

"Listen to [your] bodies because I knew there was something not right. They could not put it down to anything, but I just knew there was something wrong," she said.

"If I was at home there would be no way that she would survive. I live 20 kilometres out of town so by the time the ambulance would have got there I probably would have...just lost so much blood that she would have just passed away inside.

"Even if it's the tiniest thing, it doesn't matter. Go up to maternity and they'll look after you. They saved my life."