Elizabeth's horror discovery as she was rocking her baby daughter to sleep

Elizabeth McAuliffe was rocking her one-year-old daughter to sleep when she noticed a tiny change in Sophia's features that made her stomach sink, though she didn't know why.

"I remember rocking her to sleep one night and noticing that her left eye had started to bulge. Her little face was just looking different," Elizabeth tells 9Honey of that night in 2021.

"At that moment, rocking her, I definitely knew that deep down something wasn't right and that whatever it was, wasn't going to go away on its own."

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Sophia had been a happy, healthy baby for the first 10 months of her life and though she picked up a few common illnesses after starting childcare, it was never anything serious.

By the time she celebrated her first birthday, her parents were pretty immune to any coughs or colds she had, but Elizabeth knew the bulging eye was something different.

The very next day after she spotted it, Sophia became lethargic and Elizabeth headed straight to the GP, who reassured her it was a mild case of conjunctivitis.

At first, the diagnosis felt like a relief, but that feeling faded quickly. Elizabeth's "mum instincts" were telling her something wasn't right.

When her daughter's symptoms hadn't improved in three days, she took Sophia to hospital near their Sydney home and waited more than five hours to be seen.

"We kept getting deprioritised because I think they just kind of thought I was a paranoid mum, that I just needed comfort and they pushed me back after all the broken bones," she says.

Finally, a doctor came to take a look at Sophia and the unusual bulge in her left eye and the mood suddenly shifted.

"The doctor noticed that her left eye wasn't dilating and that's when the whole mood from the hospital's perspective changed," she says.

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Sophia was now a top priority and was sent for a whole host of tests and scans while Elizabeth waited anxiously for news, fearing the worst.

At one point she confessed to a doctor that she was afraid her daughter had "something like cancer" and he replied, "to be honest, like that's what we're looking for".

Sophia was sent for an MRI that was meant to take 20 minutes but dragged on for well over an hour. In the midst of COVID-19 restrictions, Elizabeth was forced to wait alone.

"Then they gave my husband an exemption to come into the hospital, which was a red flag that things were definitely not good," she says.

Doctors told the couple the devastating news; Sophia had a huge mass growing behind her left eye. Further tests were needed to determine if it was cancerous.

"Time definitely stood still in that moment¡­ I looked at the MRI and it was horrible, it was just like a spider web all throughout the left side of her face," Elizabeth says.

"It was definitely then that I really realised a mother's intuition is pretty much always right."

The family were transferred to Westmead Hospital for a slew of medical procedures, scans and even a surgery to remove part of the mass in the 13-month-old's head for biopsy.

It wasn't long before her parents had confirmation. Their daughter had cancer and an incredibly rare kind for a child of her age; a germ cell yolk sac tumour (extra gonadal).

The tumour in her head was already Stage 3 and treatment would need to begin right away to save Sophia's life, though doctors assured her parents their daughter had a 70 to 80 per cent chance of survival. Elizabeth was still crushed.

"That's a 20 to 30 per cent chance that she won't be here. There's actually no words to describe that feeling, it's like a different reality," she says of hearing the news.

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That very same week, just as Sophia was starting treatment, Elizabeth found out she was pregnant with her and her husband's second child.?

It was joyful news, but they had to focus on their daughter before making any plans for baby number two.

Sophia required four rounds of outpatient chemotherapy over a five-month period and it was tough on her tiny body, causing nausea, lethargy and making her hair fall out.

The worst side effects were the night terrors, which Elizabeth would rock her through every night. Knowing how scared her baby girl was broke Elizabeth's heart.

Fortunately, the mass in Sophia's head responded to treatment and began to shrink, finally allowing the swelling in the toddler's eye and face to go down.

Her parents were thrilled when the five-month treatment was finished, assuming the ordeal was over, but one last MRI revealed more bad news; there was still a mass in her head.

The only option to remove it for good was a five-hour surgery that could potentially leave the left side of Sophia's face totally paralysed, but luckily it was successful.

Surgeons were able to remove almost all of the mass and the remaining tissue was dead, so it no longer posed a threat to the little girl.

Sadly, the tumour had crushed Sophia's optic nerve in her left eye, leaving her blind in that eye but her parents were just happy to have her cancer-free.

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She's now been in remission for over a year, but Elizabeth still worries about her daughter's health, especially knowing there's a 20 to 30 per cent chance of recurrence.

"The other thing now is the trauma that Sophia has," she says.

"We do need to go in once a month for blood tests, and for scans every three months, and she's just terrified of the doctors."

The family try to focus on the good days instead, especially now that Sophia has her baby brother Hamish to dote on and is the face of the ACRF's new fundraising campaign.?

She's fronting Australian Cancer Research Foundation's Autumn e-Appeal, raising funds to back brilliant research that saves lives, including those of sick kids like her.

"It's not the love of a family or the strength of a child that beats this disease, it's research and science¡­ which needs a lot of funding," Elizabeth explains.

"I love being involved cause you it's a tiny thing, but at least it's something we can do to help. Hopefully more families have a similar experience to us."

Sophia is the face of Australian Cancer Research Foundation's Autumn Appeal, which supports brilliant, life-saving cancer research projects like the ACRF International Centre for the Proteome of Human Cancer (ProCan). Donate today to help make a life-saving difference to children like Sophia and their families.

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