Meet Emma

---

Emma 

27.5 Weeks 

1 lb 15 oz

This was my very first pregnancy. Overall, I wasn’t feeling too good. I couldn’t put my finger on it but I felt like something was wrong. I called the doctor every week for 5 weeks and was told I was fine. My blood pressure wasn’t high and I had no protein. Friday night a felt a sharp pain in my upper stomach. I thought maybe it was just the baby turning? On Saturday, I was feeling really crummy about 3 o’clock but my husband had to be at work at 3:30 and I knew if we went to the ER we would be there forever. I decided to take a nap because I had a migraine. I’ve had them all my life so I didn’t think much of it. I slept for about an hour or so and decided to take a shower to try and relax my muscles. While in the shower I had the impression, “You need to go now. You need to go now.” Got out grabbed a towel and texted my husband we needed to go in. It took him about 15 minutes to get home. As he was walking in the door I was throwing up.  There was so much pressure in my face that I burst the blood vessels in both my eyes. He helped me get dressed and we left.

When we got to the hospital, they had him go to a waiting room and had me sign in. I was in so much pain I filled out the paperwork wrong. I messed up the due date putting it as that day’s. The nurse had me change and got me in bed and left for about half an hour. I was getting so much worse and I couldn’t find the call button. Someone finally came and I had them go get my husband. When the nurse finally came to do vitals my blood pressure was 187/101. The nurse said, “I need to get the doctor NOW,” and she RAN out of the room. She came back and was quickly doing multiple things and said she couldn’t tell us what she was doing because she needed to get things done, she would explain later. 

I later found out I had HELLP syndrome,  one step further than preeclampsia and the next steps in it were seizure, coma, and death. They quickly got me started on medicines for me and my baby. They did an ultrasound to check on how the baby was doing and started running blood work. The head of the NICU came in to meet with us and let us know there was a 93% chance our baby would make it. We had to wait on an ambulance to transfer me to a better hospital with a better NICU. 

I got transferred and had 5 nurses waiting for me running in and out of the room. The doctor walked in and said we were doing a c-section in 5 minutes. We were originally told a day and a half to two days is when we would have her and it ended up being not even 12 hours later. I was so sick I was passing out throughout the emergency c-section. She was born at 2:47 am. I could see her reflection because they had her on a table next to me. The were counting 15 seconds, 30 seconds, 45 seconds, 1 minute. I hadn’t heard her breathe and was so very scared. Most babies this early need to be intubated to breathe. Turns out she was a little fighter and she came out and coughed. They were counting to try and get as much cord blood into her as possible. They only had one minute to wait.

I told my husband I was about to puke. He told the anesthesiologist who handed me a straw like when you go to the dentist. They then told my husband to follow them to the nursery. They had put her in a bag to hold in body temperature. We would be getting our own private room because of how small she was. I couldn’t see her for 3 days because I was so sick. She dropped down to 1 lb 12 oz before she started gaining weight again. 

At one week old they pulled out her central line and she developed MRSA and had to be intubated. She was breathing mostly room air at this point but had to keep it on all the time.  She is such a fighter she was only intubated for a day and a half. She also had a hole in her heart, but her brain scans came back normal. They gave her a dose of Tylenol to help close her heart. It got smaller but was still there. It was small enough that we were told she didn’t need surgery but we would just watch it for the time being. She wasn’t making enough blood so she had to get shots every other day to make more. She did that for about a month until she developed a hemangioma, that’s when we stopped the shots. 

Emma would have a lot of events where she would drop her heartrate from about 140 to 40 in seconds. She would turn completely blue and stop moving. She did this on a pretty regular basis and had to stay past her due date. Towards the end she would do it every 6 days like clockwork. We finally got to room in the hospital to take her home. At 5 am she did it again and I had to run and get the nurses. She had to be bagged until they could get her back on oxygen. She did it for another three weeks until we got to take her home. She was born March 25 and we finally got to go home 108 days later on July 11. She was the second longest baby in the NICU. She is definitely feisty and can hold her own after all of this. She’s our strong, brave little girl.