‘Bloody traumatic’: Bachelor couple Sam and Snezana Wood reveal new details about family’s health battle
Sam and Snezana Wood have revealed new details about their baby daughter’s medical scare, as the family open up their home to Stellar.
Stellar
Don't miss out on the headlines from Stellar. Followed categories will be added to My News.
When Sam Wood met his now-wife Snezana on The Bachelor Australia in 2015, the fitness pro saw his future before him. He would move in with the love of his life, care for her young daughter, and get married. Seven years later, his vision has become reality, and now the couple are raising four daughters in a happily modern family. As they celebrate Father’s Day with Stellar in this exclusive photo shoot, Wood opens up about his joyous ride on the “craziest roller-coaster ever”
It’s fair to say there’s not much sleep being had by Sam and Snezana Wood.
The couple welcomed their latest addition, youngest daughter Harper, in May, and it has increased the chaos in their household by a factor of 1000.
“Little Harper may or may not stir, so we’ll see how we go,” Sam says of their baby girl, who’s being nursed by Snezana as they sit down with Stellar at their family home in the Melbourne suburb of Elsternwick.
“It’s a bit of a circus, I’m not going to lie,” he adds with a laugh.
“I think at the moment, a lot of people sort of go, ‘How do you cope? How do you get the balance right?’ And the first answer to that is, we don’t. We’re drowning a bit at times.”
Even so, as they mark this year’s Father’s Day as a family of six, the couple can’t help but speak with pride about being parents to four girls: Eve, 17 (Snezana’s daughter from a previous relationship), Willow, 4, Charlie, 3, and baby Harper.
“There are throwaway comments made by people, ‘Ah, I bet you wish you had a boy!’” Sam reflects. “That thought has never even entered my mind. I love being a girl dad. We live in a very pretty, nice-smelling, crazy, noisy house.”
Getting to this point, however, hasn’t been easy for the family. Harper’s birth, a month premature, prompted a lengthy stay in hospital for both mother and baby as they each grappled with serious health issues in the aftermath.
“I had an infection and so did Harper,” Snezana tells Stellar of the ordeal, which included the 41-year-old being diagnosed with sepsis – a condition that can be life-threatening.
“It was a bit of a scary situation; I don’t even know how long it was after I gave birth [to Harper], but I was whisked away and she was whisked away.”
“[Snezana’s infection] kind of brought the [labour] on,” Sam shares. “The obstetrician’s observation was, ‘I feel like your body knew that it was not a good place for the baby. And that’s why your waters broke a month early.’
“We were caught by surprise. Snez hadn’t packed a [hospital] bag. Nothing. Then it was game on.”
Snezana had only held her newborn for a few minutes before she was taken to another hospital.
“That was very hard, very traumatic being separated from your child, right after you’ve had them,” she reflects.
“All you want to do is hold them and make sure they’re OK. We’re all well now. Harper spent a month in special care. I spent some time in [the intensive care unit] – it was a bit of a whirlwind.”
“Whirlwind” is one way to describe it. Sam has another: “Bloody traumatic.”
Recalling the toll the experience took on his wife, he reveals that “she was really traumatised when she couldn’t be with Harper.
“Those first four weeks of Harper’s life, we were trying to juggle taking care of the other three girls while spending as much time with Harper as we could. Snez would spend 10 hours a day in the hospital with Harper.”
And the only reason she wasn’t there for longer, Snezana adds, was because the nurses would kick her out.
After spending the first few weeks of her life in a hospital, Harper’s health has now well and truly turned a corner.
“She’s coming good all the time,” Sam reveals, smiling as he looks over at his youngest daughter.
“Obviously, being prem, she’s pretty little. But she’s now… chubby cheeks, and arms, [and she] drinks so much milk. She’s definitely making up for it. She’s a little cutie.
“It all goes so quickly. Even to sit here and talk about Harper being four months old, it feels like two weeks ago [that she was born].
“The first saying I heard when my friends started having kids was ‘long days, quick years’, and it’s so, so true.”
Clearly, being a dad is something of a calling for the 42-year old, who is happy to report that Snezana and the girls have sweet, sugar-fuelled plans for Father’s Day. “I don’t get many days when it’s about Dad in this household,” he says with a laugh.
“[The girls] always want to make Sam breakfast pancakes,” Snezana says of the family’s plans to mark the day with their “incredible” dad.
“It will be a very messy culinary masterpiece at home, I think.”
And it’s those small moments that offer so much joy, she tells Stellar.
“That’s what you stop and think about when you’re in the house and everyone is driving you mad – they’re screaming and crying and there are 100 things going on. You have to stop and go, ‘This isn’t for long!’ Eve is 17, she’s going to be out in the world soon.”
Before she can continue, Harper cries softly in the background. “I love her little cry,” Snezana says.
“Like, I love listening to her. You’ve got to think of it in a different way – to enjoy all the little sounds and whimpers. The newborn cry is so sweet, then they change. They grow up so quick.”
The Woods’ relationship blossomed from the moment they met on the 2015 season of The Bachelor Australia, with their romance playing out in front of Network 10’s reality cameras.
Then in her mid-30s and a single mother to nine-year-old Eve, Snezana was far from being a stereotypical fame-seeking reality TV contestant.
But after the show finished, the pair took their relationship into the real world with Snezana and Eve relocating from their home in Perth to Sam’s home city of Melbourne, which is where the family still calls home.
As soon as mother and daughter arrived, Sam went into dad mode, helping to raise Eve.
In 2018, the couple tied the knot in Byron Bay, and Sam officially became her stepfather – though that isn’t the word they use.
“To us, it’s not a blended family, it’s our family. It’s not a stepdaughter or a stepdad. I’m dad, and Evie is my daughter,” Sam tells Stellar.
“And that has been the case since day one, since it was just Evie, Snez and [me]. It was important to understand that Evie was comfortable with that.”
It was crucial for Sam that Eve felt completely comfortable about him stepping into a paternal role, so the trio had plenty of discussions about their future as a family before Snezana and Eve moved from Perth.
“It was clear to me, and I loved it, that Evie was craving a dad, and that’s what she wanted and needed. I feel really lucky that I can be that person,” he tells Stellar.
“Then having our other three girls, it brought us closer. Evie had always wanted to be a big sister, the age difference doesn’t matter at all.
“From day one, Evie has been my daughter; we have four daughters. She was nine when I first met her, and had just turned 10 when the girls moved to Melbourne.
“She’s now 17,” he adds. “I take her for driving lessons, she’s about to go to her Year 11 formal. There’s so much of Snez in her.”
But raising four girls is also a daunting task, and Snezana admits that she dreads preparing for when their daughters have to face the pressure of being young women in a social-media era.
“It’s a real balance,” she says. “There is nothing better than raising little girls and watching them grow up and learn to be strong and independent. I think it’s important that we teach our girls that they can do whatever they want.”
The pair lead by example and have built a formidable business empire.
The fitness professional’s successful online workout and nutrition brand 28 by Sam Wood was acquired by genomics company myDNA for $71.2 million in May (and he became a myDNA investor), and he owns a gym in Brighton, fittingly named The Woodshed.
Meanwhile, Snezana has amassed more than 330,000 Instagram followers and landed deals with several high-profile brands, including UK clothing label Next, for which she and the whole family are ambassadors.
She also reveals she’s starting her own fashion line and writing a book.
“I think my style evolves depending on where I am in life,” she says of her sartorial taste and Instagram influence.
“You have that staple wardrobe that you can wear at all times, and just mix it up with funky little pieces. I wear a lot of basics, because I’m always pregnant or breastfeeding.
“We love dressing our girls up. When we did the [Stellar] shoot, they were ecstatic with all the little dresses.
“We love going online and choosing [clothes]. They love matchy-matchy. They love sparkles; so does Mum. They love to match, wear what Eve is wearing or something similar.”
Ever the doting dad, Sam says he loves watching his daughters experiment with their style, even at such young ages. “Charlie is an absolute character; she dresses herself in the wackiest outfits you’ve ever seen,” he says, before turning to the question of his personal style:
“I don’t overthink it. I’m often in activewear because of what I do. When you’re in activewear all the time, you sort of like to dress up, because you don’t dress up that often.
It’s amazing watching Snez and Evie – they both love fashion. They share clothes. The two of them talk fashion a lot.”
While the couple certainly know how to dial up the glamour when the occasion calls for it, their daily life is a far cry from the rose ceremonies and extravagant dates that led them to where they are today – bleary-eyed, wearing matching outfits, and never happier.
“Part of it feels like it was two years ago because you speak about it so often,” Sam says of their time on The Bachelor.
“It was seven years ago. How on Earth [do we now have] four kids [and are] married? It’s been the craziest roller-coaster ever. We still pinch ourselves and sort of laugh about it.
“It’s the best thing we’ve ever done.”
More Coverage
Originally published as ‘Bloody traumatic’: Bachelor couple Sam and Snezana Wood reveal new details about family’s health battle
Why Sienna Miller ‘doesn’t want to be a movie star’
As one of Hollywood’s most stylish celebrities, Sienna Miller is used to the spotlight. But in recent years, the 42-year-old British actor confesses, she is much less interested in fame.
Read more
‘I couldn’t breathe’: Mollie O reveals anxiety attack before gold medal
Mollie O’Callaghan has sometimes struggled in the spotlight as an Australian swimming superstar. Now, she has revealed what really happened at the Paris Olympics – and the anxiety that overwhelmed her.
Read more