A HEARTBROKEN mum has relived the horrific moment she watched her newborn granddaughter and beloved teen daughter die within hours.
Justine Ryan was there as both her daughter Mellodie-Ocean Jarman, 19, and baby girl Athena-Pearl took their final breaths.
Heavily pregnant Mellodie suffered a sudden cardiac arrest at home before doctors delivered little Athena by emergency C-section.
The tot was put on life support but it soon became clear she was too premature to survive – and was placed in her mum’s arms to die.
Distraught Justine Ryan has now opened up exclusively to The Sun about her trauma of losing “her girls” just hours apart.
She said: “Mellodie was my only daughter and I was so happy to have my first granddaughter – I’ve lost both my girls.”
During the desperate wait at the hospital, Justine recalled: “I was just thinking ‘save them’.”
Grieving dad Daniel Darbyshire also told us he was “grateful” to have been able to hold baby daughter Athena, even if only briefly.
He described the heartbreak of having to agree to turn off his daughter’s life support.
“She was struggling and the doctors had tried everything,” he said. “They said it was hurting Athena to keep going – they asked if I wanted to end the suffering or keep going.
“That’s when we made the decision to have her last breath in Mellodie’s arms.”
He added: “I was happy she could take her last breath with her mum.”
Mellodie had collapsed at home, and also “took her last breath” in her own mum’s arms as an ambulance raced to the scene.
The teenager, from Atherton, Greater Manchester, had been discharged from hospital with a suspected UTI the previous day after fainting while waiting for a train.
Justine, 52, said: “I only wish I’d been with her then, I would have made sure she stayed in hospital – maybe she’d still be alive.”
The grandmother said Mellodie had been feeling unwell for a couple of weeks, including struggling to breathe – though had continually been told by midwives and doctors it was nothing to worry about.
After being discharged from hospital on January 31 2024, she slept late the following day, and remained mostly in bed.
Justine and Mellodie shared a Chinese takeaway in the evening, with Mellodie’s partner and Athena’s dad Daniel Darbyshire, 19, going for a final night out in Bolton with pals ahead of his first child’s birth.
But the mum-to-be’s health suddenly took a turn for the worst as she waited up for her boyfriend.
Justine said: “She came upstairs and said she’d had a fall, feeling faint.
“She went into the bathroom and then I dove out of bed as she started shouting of me.”
Justine recalled how Mellodie “was going all floppy and faint”, adding: “She was white, she couldn’t hear properly, kept saying she could see her grandpa who died in 2015.”
She called for an ambulance at 11.22pm and was told to call back if the patient’s condition deteriorated further.
Justine also tried to call Daniel.
“The ambulance call handler was saying check she’s breathing – I was blowing in her face and patting her on the back,” said Justine, holding back tears.
She described a “massive change” in Mellodie within just a few minutes, adding: “She took her last breath in my arms.”
Paramedics arrived and tried desperately to revive the teenager.
Justine said she was downstairs with her son Xavier, 14, and a neighbour.
“They used a (defibrillator) machine – we were downstairs, listening but not listening.
“They got a pulse two or three times but couldn’t move her anywhere until she was stable.”
By this time Daniel had also arrived home and Mellodie was rushed to Bolton Royal Hospital.
The family all followed and while waiting in A&E were eventually told Athena had been delivered.
However, Mellodie was pronounced dead at 1.52am on February 2.
“We spent some time with Mellodie and then went to see Athena,” said Justine.
“We all had hold of her while she had the tubes and wires.
“She was deteriorating, there was nothing they could do.”
Then, just 18 hours after being born, the little baby was taken to the chapel of rest in a mobile incubator before being taken off life support and placed in her mum’s arms to take her final breath.
Daniel, meanwhile, has remained living at Justine’s home where the family continues to support each other.
Justine said: “Boo was his life, his forever and Athena was his first baby.”
Describing his baby daughter’s final moments, Daniel told The Sun: “They took her from the neonatal unit, out of the incubator and they were pumping oxygen into her manually – and then the nurses put her in Mellodie’s arms.
“I was happy she could take her last breath with her mum. After that, I pushed Athena back to the neonatal unit in a pram, and we bathed her and got her ready, then they placed her back in Mellodie’s arms.”
Asked how he is coping, Daniel said: “I don’t know, I don’t really talk about anything – I just go day by day, really.”
He went back to work in a kitchen just a couple of months after the tragic double loss, and said it’s helped him to stay balanced.
“It was just to keep myself in a routine and not sitting there doing nothing,” he explained.
“Just sitting there in your thoughts, it’s not the healthiest, so I went back to work relatively quickly, for something to do.”
He added: “It’s just the fact that I’m having to deal with not having Mellodie constantly with me every day, we were always together – it’s very strange.”
Daniel and Mellodie had met at school and were friends for a couple of years before their relationship developed.
He recalled how he was at work when she told him she was pregnant.
“She was doing the pregnancy test while I was in the Uber – then told me while I was at work,” he said.
“It was a shock that I was going to be a dad, but it was something we’d talked about. It was a relief and a shock that it’d happened.”
Daniel said he and Mellodie and both written a list of names before settling on Athena.
In the months since losing his partner and daughter, the young dad has faced a court battle to get his name added to Athena’s birth certificate.
As the couple weren’t married, Justine was seen by law as Mellodie’s next of kin and because she died so suddenly, had not been able to give formal consent for Daniel to be included.
However, the issue is now resolved and Daniel is awaiting the new updated birth certificate.
“I understand it from a legal perspective, they need to be sure, but it’s been a struggle and it just seems silly,” he said.
Mellodie’s uncle Steven Darby has been helping Daniel with the legal battle, as well as liaising with the hospital and coroners court – and set up a GoFundMe to raise funds for the family.
Referring to the issues with getting Daniel’s name added to the birth certificate, he said: “The whole system just seems to be lacking in trauma-informed care.
“What I couldn’t understand was how as a Government you make it so difficult for Daniel as a father to be named on the birth certificate but then he’s expected to shoulder the burden of paying for the funeral and everything else.”
He added: “When it’s something he should be automatically entitled to, he has to go through a mound of legal loops.”
A three-day inquest is due to be held on March 16 at Bolton Coroner’s Court.
The family’s representative said they would be able to look at issues including whether the clinicians who saw Mellodie when she became unwell on January 31 should have suspected a pulmonary embolism or deep vein thrombosis (DVT).
