A woman from Kiama Downs was forced to undergo an emergency caesarean after she says she became violently ill after eating a hot chicken roll from a Sydney bakery suspected of being at the centre of a food-poisoning outbreak.

First-time mother Ashley Buchanan remains in Wollongong Hospital after giving birth to her daughter, Ava, on Tuesday, five weeks before her due date.

Mrs Buchanan said she and her husband, Caine, had travelled to Sylvania, in Sydney’s south, for a birthing class at the weekend when they stopped at Box Village Bakery and Cafe for lunch about 1pm. Both she and her husband ate hot chicken rolls with gravy, she told the Illawarra Mercury from her hospital bed on Friday.

By 8pm, Mrs Buchanan was violently ill with intense cramping, vomiting and diarrhoea. Mr Buchanan drove her to Shellharbour Hospital about 1am on Monday. By then, he too was experiencing some of the same symptoms.

Mrs Buchanan was transferred to Wollongong Hospital, where doctors kept watch on her falling blood pressure and worsening loss of fluids. Doctors decided to operate when unborn Ava’s movements slowed.

Mrs Buchanan told radio station 2UE earlier that she was admitted to the hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) after the surgery.

“It was all quite frightening, because my blood pressure went right down; they had to rush me to ICU straight after the delivery,” she said.

“My husband was actually in hospital at the time, but because he was sick he wasn’t allowed to come into the theatre with me to see the birth, so it was all very stressful and frightening.”

“It wasn’t until the next day they told me they were so lucky that they made that call, because once they started the caesarean they found I had internal bleeding so it could have ended up much worse if they waited,” Mrs Buchanan told the Mercury.

Baby Ava ultimately arrived at 35 weeks and six days, weighing a healthy 2.9 kilograms.

Doctors told the family a younger baby of a lesser weight might not have withstood the stresses of food poisoning.

The South Eastern Sydney Local Health District said 151 people had now presented themselves at Sutherland and St George hospitals with food poisoning, and 27 had been admitted to those hospitals.