Our daughter, Gemma Rose, was born on March 13, 2016 at 32-4/7 weeks. She weighed in at 2lbs, 10oz and was 14 inches long. I had had a typical early pregnancy, it was in all honesty pretty easy, I was never sick, my only complaint would have been that I was just SO tired! As my second trimester started and continued, I never felt that burst of energy that so many other expectant moms do, in fact, I felt more and more exhausted as the days went on. I would come home from work and collapse on the couch for the rest of the evening, my legs swollen beyond belief. I knew something was going on, but every check up was reassuring, both of us looked fine. Until about 30 weeks, when everything changed. My blood pressure was elevated and my labs were off. I was diagnosed with preeclampsia, but mild. Our ultrasounds showed that Gemma was very small, but very healthy, and would have to be monitored closely. The next 2 weeks was a whirlwind of almost daily appointments. On Friday March 11 my blood pressure was dangerously high (190/110 or thereabouts) and I was immediately started on medications, both to keep me safe and to grow Gemma's lungs in a hurry. 48 hours later, on a gloomy, cold Sunday evening our tiny girl was born via C-Section. She was safer outside of me than she was in.
From there began the most exhausting, most terrifying, most joyous 10 weeks of my life. Gemma was taken immediately to the NICU as she needed the support of CPAP for her breathing. She was otherwise perfect, we were able to start little feedings of breastmilk that evening, via a small tube through her nose. After a week she was able to wean off her CPAP support and was able to breathe on her own without any support at all. We were transferred to the step down unit, the Special Care Nursery, and on that very evening she stared having trouble breathing again. She was placed on high flow oxygen for weeks after that. Her rate was so fast, often up to 110 breaths a minute, that even I would get short of breath holding her. The neonatologists were completely baffled as to why she was having such a prolonged case of late onset respiratory distress. We had to have the pulmonary team involved and thankfully, after several weeks of patience and some experimenting with different medications her breathing troubles resolved and she never needed oxygen again!
Our next couple weeks were focused on getting Gemma to eat enough to come home. It took a long time and again, a lot of patience, but we were able to get her volumes to an acceptable level and we were able to come home without a feeding tube.
Gemma is now a year old and as healthy as can be! She's on track with her development for her corrected age (based on her due date, not her date of birth). She still struggles to eat, but we've visited the feeding clinic to help us help her! She is very bright and very verbal. We love her to pieces.
we are so excited to be raising funds for the NICU program at Children's Hospital. I truly believe that without the doctors, nurses, respiratory therapists and all the support staff, Gemma wouldn't be home with us. We want to make sure that EVERY baby born early, or with health problems, gets the BEST care possible!