Miracle Story #21 (Part 4 of 4)
Kelley:
“The nurse called my mom on her cell phone while she was in the airplane and she said, “You text Kelley when you get to the airport. I promised her you would text her.”
I still laugh about that.
They flew in to Jabara Airport.
Wesley’s ambulance went and got the flight team and transferred them over there.
My mom texted me.
“We’re at Wesley.”
So I ran down to the NICU.
I was standing there and they were like, “Kelley, they haven’t called us. She’s not here yet.”
“Oh hell yea she is. She is at the door. My mom texted me.”
They all laughed.
“You would know.”
“We’re putting her back on Team 4. You’re the only one we will let back here when we are admitting a baby, because it’s your baby.”
“I’ll stay out of the way, I’ll stay out of the way.”
They brought her in.
And they let me see her.
They let me touch her.
My baby.
I gave my mom a big hug.
And Jeremy came in.
There is this nurse.
Her name is Natalie.
And Natalie has been at Wesley since the 1980’s.
She’s got these big hands, like Jeremy’s size.
The first time Jeremy met her, he said, “Honey, do you think that nurse will be okay with Ashtyn? She’s got those big hands, and she’s such a little baby.”
“Jeremy she’s worked here for a long time. She trains nurses.” (laughs)
Jeremy had asked her, “How long have you worked at Wesley?”
“Oh, today is my second day.”
“Oh, it shows.”
So they already had a teasing repertoire.
Natalie walked over and she said to me, “Kelley, I’m going to take care of Ashtyn tonight.”
And I replied, “I don’t care if you want to, but I am hugging you.”
I gave her a hug.
And I started sobbing.
I slept so good that night.
Just to know that she was home…
That she was at Wesley with people we knew, who cared about her and loved her as much as we did.
People that we had gained that personal relationship with.
It was amazing.
Dr. Dorn took her back on as his patient.
He told us, “Okay, she’s been on the vent an extremely long time. Usually we will take them off the ventilator and put them on CPAP, which is a positive pressure system. It takes the tube out of their mouth, but puts this big tube with nasal prongs in their nose, and it pushes air in. It’s unlike a nasal fentanyl, that comes in as wisps. They’ll usually fail, but we have to at least attempt, because they never attempted up at Children’s Mercy.”
“Okay, but she’s not going to fail.”
“What?”
“She’s not going to fail. How many days do we have to go before I prove to you that she’s not going to fail?”
“Two or three days. But I think in three days we’ll know whether she’s going to go back.”
She never went back.
She stayed on CPAP.
And then I got sick and I had a cough.
And I was devastated.
I couldn’t go back to see her.
“Do you know how many parents would have a cough like you do and wouldn’t even care? They’d still be back in the NICU.”
“But look what she’s gone through. There’s no way.”
Lindsey was our other primary nurse, the day shift nurse.
I made her Facetime me as they were pulling out her tube and putting on the CPAP.
So I could be there.
Jeremy was back there.
I didn’t want to get her sick, but I didn’t want to miss it either.
They took pictures for us.
When NICU moms deliver, they have a camera that they hook up to a printer and they print photos for them, so they can take them back to their room.
And they printed photos for us so that I could have them.
Since I was out in the waiting room.”
Jeremy:
“It’s funny because the ventilator…she used it pretty much as a pacifier. She’d grab on to a hose and suck on it.”
Kelley:
“When Ashtyn came back to Wesley she would have been at 31 weeks and 2 days, gestational age.
At that point she was 2lbs 6oz.
She was 1lb 5oz when she was born.
So she had gained 1lb 1oz.
We were excited when she would take 3cc’s of breastmilk.
And now we just look back at it, and that’s like nothing.”
Jeremy:
“She couldn’t fit in her clothes until she was 13 grams.
You talk to people and they’re like, “Oh 2lbs…or 4lbs. Whatever.”
1 lb…2lbs…that’s a small baby!
People don’t put that into perspective until...
Someone was like, “Put her next to a dollar bill.”
So we used a Runts candy box to give a perception of how big, how small, she was. She weighed 1lb, like a bottle of water, and still had functioning organs.”
Kelley:
“The next milestone was to get her up on weight.
There is a goal that they have to meet for weight, and then they can put clothes on.
She met the goal, but Lorie wouldn’t let us put clothes on her because Lorie didn’t work that night.
And night shift is the one that changes their bedding each night.
So we waited.
And she actually got to put her first set of clothing on, on Lorie’s birthday.
We got a picture of her in her first outfit that Lorie put on her.
Lorie never told us it was her birthday.
She was just like, “No, no, no. You have to wait. You have to wait until tomorrow night. She doesn’t weigh that much. You have to wait until tomorrow night when I work.”
“Okay Lorie, we’ll wait. What’s one more day?” (laughing)
So we waited for her.
The next milestone after that was getting her onto a nasal cannula.
She wasn’t on CPAP for very long, it didn’t seem.
It seems like each NICU has a different CPAP.
You’ll see ones with this big nozzle thing on the nose.
But Wesley actually forms theirs, and they’re one of the only hospitals that does that.
They have a respiratory lady that forms the tubing, and molds them and bends them.
So it looks like a big wide tube.
It looks more like a nasal cannula, but it’s a bigger prong.
And Ashtyn was so funny.
She would pull it out of her nose.
One of the NICU nurses made that and put that on the front of Ashtyn’s isolette.
Tory.
She’s a nurse practitioner now.
She does hands amazingly.
That’s Ashtyn’s actual hand print on there.”
Jeremy:
“It’s crazy how small it was.”
Kelley:
“Tory, she was the one that always loved to do different crafts.
Jeremy was sick one day and she had made one that said, “Get well soon Daddy.”
At this point, we were pretty much growing.
And as weird as it sounds, we kind of became accustomed to living at the NICU.
There’s a picture that shows what we called “our KU corner”.
My mom made Ashtyn a KU quilt.
And when they’re under a certain gestational age, they have to have a blanket over their isolette the entire time.
When we were up at Children’s Mercy, there was a baby next to us, Mason.
Mason was a 24-weeker, but he was a month ahead of us.
He was a Mizzou baby.
So his mama had a Mizzou blanket for him.
And had a sign above his isolette that she had made, that had the letters in Mizzou colors.
So we decided that we needed bigger letters.
And we did them in blue and red.
And then of course we put rhinestones on ours, and hung them above her isolette.
And then my mom hand made her quilt. (laughs)
We had gone and gotten her a board, and we would update her daily weights on there.
We had a chalk marker and the night shift nurses would fight over it.
You could just take a wipe and wipe off the weight from the day before and then write the new weights, and how many days old she was, and update it. They would say it was the border war up at Children’s Mercy, because we had the Mizzou baby next to the KU baby.
And when we came back to Wesley, her spot in the Team 4 bay was in the corner.
So when Ashtyn became of certain gestation, where she needed to be exposed to the light, we were able to hang her quilt on the wall.
We had her Jayhawk hanging on her IV tank. (laughs)
It was all decorated up.
We had tickets to a show one night.
We went to that, and afterwards I told our friends, “Okay, I’m going to go up to the NICU now.”
“What?”
It was like 10:30-11:00 at night.
“I’m going to go see Ashtyn and do skin-to-skin with her.”
“Kelley, it’s like 11:00 at night.”
“Well yeah, but you know if I would have brought her home from the hospital, this would be my time with her.”
So I would go up there and I would go back into the corner.
They had these chairs that are supposed to be gravity chairs, and they have these blankets.
You take off your shirt, you strip the baby down naked, and you put a blanket over you both and lay there and do skin-to-skin together.
That was our normal.
I don’t think Jeremy and I saw each other much at all.
We were pretty much passing each other all the time.
On the nights that I couldn’t do skin-to-skin, because I was home with my older two, he was up there doing skin-to-skin with her.
He did skin-to-skin just as much as I did.
On Valentine’s Day, when we were up there at Children’s Mercy, that was the only thing that I could give him.
Because she was so little, we could only do skin-to-skin once a day.
I had no car.
I had no money.
He showed up and I was like, “I have a present for you.”
“What?”
“I waited to do skin-to-skin today.”
So he got to do skin-to-skin for the very first time on Valentine’s Day with her.
That was my gift to him.
She was so funny.
She had these tiny little hands and she was just touching his chest hair like, ‘Whoa….this is not normal.’ (laughs)
They came in one day and they told us, “Ashtyn is doing really good so we’re going to move to you TLC.”
TLC is like this room that is connected to NICU, but it is off to the side.
It holds three babies.
They’re not quite ready to be in special care yet, because they’re still on CPAP.
And CPAP cannot be in special care.
But they’re not technically a NICU baby anymore either.
So we went into this room and we were like, “We don’t like this.”
In Team 4, we had gotten to know our nurses.
We had gotten to know about their kids and their husbands, what they were doing this weekend, and how their kids were doing in sports.
They had become our family.
Our day shift primary nurse, Lindsey, went in there with us and met the other nurses.
We did TLC for maybe a month or two.
And then Dr. Dorn told us that we were going to move down to special care.
“I don’t want to go to special care.”
Jeremy:
"Ashtyn had a grade 1 brain bleed.
Even Dr. Shah said that was pretty much unheard of for a baby born as early as she was.
It’s minimal.
I later worked with a guy who had a daughter born at 24 weeks as well.
His daughter had a grade 3 brain bleed, and she has numerous disabilities.
And she’s crippled.
I was looking at him as he was trying to tell me his story, and then I told him my story.
You just feel kind of guilty, if that makes sense.
That little girl came out with a minimal brain bleed.
No learning disabilities.
She’s just small.”
Kelley:
“Before we went out of TLC, I was breastfeeding her.
They had originally told me that a 24-weeker probably won’t breastfeed.
They had told me to just put her up there though.
She had never been supplemented with anything else besides breastmilk, and the day I started breastfeeding her, that was all she would do.
She’s never taken a bottle of anything else.
She’s had bottles of breastmilk, but that was it.
She did amazingly.
So we were in special care, but not very long.
She was just on a monitor.
She was on a whiff of oxygen from the nasal cannula, and they told us they had never taken her off of it.
I was getting frustrated, and I went to breastfeed her and just took it off.
I put it behind us and watched her numbers while I breastfed her.
The nurse pulled open the curtain and she asked, “How long have you been breastfeeding?”
“Like twenty minutes.”
“How long has she been off that oxygen?”
“Twenty minutes.”
“Only you Kelley.”
“I’m watching her. It’s only a whiff.”
That means it’s like barely even turned on.
For brain bleeds there is an assessment where they do an ultrasound scan of the head.
And like Jeremy said, Ashtyn was at a grade 1.
We had Dr. Shah look at the scan.
He’s a pediatric neurologist.
A sonogram tech had said it was a grade 2.
But our neonatologist at the time had told us it was a grade 1.
So I was concerned, because I had been looking on Google and was reading that there is a huge difference in disabilities, between the two grades.
And this was early on in the game.
So that was when we got Dr. Shah involved.
Dr. Shah is the most amazing man.
If you ever meet him, he is so funny.
When he would come in at night, he only comes at night, he would take a chair and push it all the way to the tallest setting, and just hop on it to do his charting.
He told Jeremy and I, “I wouldn’t even call this a grade 1. But we’ll call it a grade 1 because they want to call it a grade 1. But I wouldn’t even call this a grade 1.”
We were watching her eyes.
They watch them for ROP, which is retinopathy of prematurity.
It causes abnormal blood vessels to grow in the retina, and this growth can cause the retina to detach from the back of the eye and cause blindness.
Having been at Children’s Mercy, we had seen the worst of the worst.
We had seen trach kids and we had seen eye surgery kids.
You know, all those things.
So like I said earlier, Dr. Dorn came in to special care to meet with me.
“Okay Kelley, how do you feel about going home?”
“What are you talking about?”
I thought we were a couple of weeks or months off from this.
And here we were…
It was May.
He said, “I think we should do mother-baby for 3 days, and then from there, depending on how things go, you can go home.”
So I called Jeremy in a panic.
“We’re going to go home. I’m doing mother-baby.”
I went home and I cleaned my whole house.
And then I went in, on a Thursday night.
And I was with her all night long.
They brought in this stupid apnea monitor.
They had put her on a medication for apnea, but not because she had apnea.
They weren’t using it for that for her.
They were using it for her because it is also used as a diuretic.
They were worried about her bones because every time she had gotten a blood transfusion, she needed Lasix.
And with this medication, it had caused her to have acid reflux.
So her feedings had gone down.
This was two weeks prior.
Dr. Dorn had told us that we could go home if we just did a button, where we could just feed her through the button, in case she didn’t breastfeed.
Oh heck no.
If this means that we wait another week so that we can get feeding under control….
“I’m not putting her through another surgery and another scar.”
So we took her off that medicine and she started eating fine.
He had told us that one of the side effects of that medicine was reflux.
And that one of the other side effects was that she’d have to be on an apnea monitor for 72 hours after that medicine.
And we missed it by 24 hours.
If I had known that ahead of time, we would have stayed in the hospital only one more day.
So we got the monitor.
The company we had got it from forgot to clear it from the previous baby, so all night long it kept going off because the memory was full from the previous baby.
So she and I didn’t sleep that night.
And the next morning Dr. Dorn came in and he goes, “How do you feel about going home today?”
“What? We’re supposed to stay three days.”
“Well I think it would be a good idea for you both to go home.”
I called Lindsey, our day shift nurse.
Lorie, our night shift nurse, had worked that night.
And Lorie only did NICU.
She did not come down to special care.
Some nurses don’t like to do special care.
They like the higher risk babies.
But Lorie would purposely come in before her shift, so she could do Ashtyn’s assessments.
We found out later that with every break Lorie had, she would come downstairs and rock her.
She just always had to be with her.
The day you discharge, even with a well baby, you do all of this paperwork.
We got discharged at like 7:30 in the morning.
But it was 8:00 at night before we left.
We were scared.
It was Day 133.
And this had been our life.
They were like, “Here you go. Here’s your baby.”
And we were hesitant to take her home.
“Are you sure? We could stay a couple more days.”
I was okay with going home and coming back to see her.
And I know that sounds so weird.
But that had become our norm…
We brought her home on a Friday.
And on Saturday, Lindsey and Lorie were both at our house by noon.
Not because we called them.
They just came over.
They both lived by us.
And that was just weird.
Before her discharge, Ashtyn’s brain bleed had completely dissolved.
Her ROP was completely resolved.
She has done follow up with her eye doctor, and he has told us that he doesn’t need to see her again until she starts kindergarten.
He also told us that he would never have even known she was a 24-weeker, by looking at her eyes.”
Jeremy:
“When she was first born, her eyes weren’t even open yet.”
Kelley:
“She was like a kitten. They were fused shut.”
Jeremy:
“One opened up, but then she got jaundice.
So they had to put her under the bilirubin lights.
They put this big old mask on her.
You’d look at her in this glass box, and she’d kind of look at you with that one eye open.”
Kelley:
“Lorie had told us when her second eye opened, but they put her back on bili lights, so we didn’t get to see it for three days.”
Poor kid.
She worked so hard to open her eyes and then…”
Jeremy:
“Her eyelashes were so long, they would curve and stick to the side of her head.”
Kelley:
“Both of my older girls were born bald.
So for Ashtyn to come out with dark brown hair was amazing.
It was cool that she came out with hair.
Ashtyn followed up with Rainbows.
Rainbows United has a program here in Wichita where they follow kids for three years.
Wesley automatically submits your discharge to them and then you decide whether you want to be a part of the program or not.
They assign you to a physical therapist and an occupational therapist.
It’s like a team.
But your physical therapist is the one that comes out and sees you and decides when you need to see that occupational therapist.
Or when you need to see the speech pathologist, or a teacher, or an audiologist.
Ellen became our God-send.
She left Rainbows and moved to Kansas City after Ashtyn turned three.
She waited until Ashtyn turned three.
I was so glad.
Her son was having his third baby and it just worked out that that was when she was able to transfer up there.
We would text her videos..
“This is what Ashtyn is doing now...should we be concerned? She’s got this cough going on…”
Things like that.
She saw other high risk babies too.
So it was nice to have Ellen, because she would come to the house.
It wasn’t like a doctor’s appointment, where we had to get her out.
Ellen was also able to give us different things to work with Ashtyn on.
Ellen worked with us on her rolling over.
But Ashtyn was a late walker.
When it came to those milestones, even at her adjusted age, she should have been doing that.
Adjusted means they go off of their actual due date, how far she should be.
So with walking, she was behind.
Instead of coming once a month, Ellen would come once a week.
Or every two weeks, until we met that milestone.
And then she would back off.
So it just depended on how she was doing.
She would ask, “Okay, how’s her constipation doing?”
Or she would bring us different games and involve the whole family.
The girls would be here.
For Ashtyn to walk, she had Madyson hold her hands in front of her.
Ashtyn’s favorite person was Madyson.
So she and Madyson helped Ashtyn walk.
And I would video tape it.
They were the team.
Ellen incorporated everybody.
So she was like our lifeline.
Lorie decided right after Ashtyn got out of the NICU that she wanted to become a travel nurse.
I almost had to be committed once she decided to leave. (laughs)
They were selling their house, and her first assignment was in Kansas City.
She worked her night shift and drove down to make it back for Ashtyn’s first birthday party.
So she was there.
Her second assignment was Denver, because that’s where Kingston lives.
Kingston is her first primary baby, who she is still close with.
She would watch Ashtyn when I would coach Madyson’s soccer games.
We were seeing each other all of the time.
We’ve gone skiing with Lorie.
Lorie had decided then, that after Denver, she and her husband and her two boys would travel nurse to Hawaii.
So for Ashtyn’s second birthday we flew to Hawaii.
And then for her third birthday, Lorie came back to Wichita so she wouldn’t miss it.
So Lorie has not missed a birthday yet.”
Editor:
“Your story is a great testimony.
Do you have any words of encouragement to families that are going through this kind of thing right now?
You have mentioned things that different people have told you along the way that really helped you and set the tone for you, as far as expectations, as you have gone through this.
What would you turn around and say to someone who is on a similar journey right now?”
Kelley:
“When you get out of the NICU, you can become a part of a group.
It’s called the Family Advisory Group.
It’s a group of NICU nurses and parents whose kids have graduated from the NICU.
They are a committee for making the NICU better, but also for reaching out to parents.
I became a part of that group.
They try to pair you up with other moms that are actively struggling in the NICU.
And one of the things that I told one of these moms recently when I met with her, she and her husband actually….
“Always try to just take, each day…every day is going to be hard…try to take one positive thing. Some days are going to be harder to take a positive out of, but you can always find one thing positive out of each day there in the NICU.”
Also...
“You and your partner are the best team. And you have to be your child's voice.”
At first it was hard for Jeremy and I to know that we were Ashtyn’s voice.
We were the ones that had to point out things that we didn’t think were right.
Even though I’m not a neonatologist, and I’m not a respiratory therapist, if I didn’t think it was right, I had the right to stand up for her.
She’s my child.
If you have that feeling, then go with that feeling.
And know that it’s not right.
We also believe that Ashtyn had a lot of powers above watching over her.
Jeremy has had dreams of Richie.
Richie was one of those guys that had nine lives and could wreck any car and flip them and just keep on driving.
I feel like there in the isolette, he was there with her.
And on those rough days she would flip that car.
And he was there with her.
I went to a conference and there was a mom there talking.
She said she had talked to her son and he asked, “Mom, why do you always cry when you talk about my NICU stay?”
And she said, “I feel guilty that at night I left you there by yourself.”
“I wasn’t alone.”
“I know, the nurses and doctors and respiratory therapists were taking care of you.”
“No, the angels were in there taking care of me.”
So I believe that Ashtyn had a lot of our family members taking care of her.
That she had my grandparents taking care of her.
The amount of things that just went the right way…
I look back at those days where I was just so angry with God and I was so mad.
Like the transport from Kansas City that didn’t go right...
And I think back and know that He had his plan regarding when she needed to come home.
For us as humans, it’s hard to trust in that vision.
When it’s supposed to be.
And how it’s supposed to go.
But you have to trust in that vision.
Everything that she has gone through has been a learning experience.
Everything that she is going through is a learning experience.
She has taught us so much.
Jeremy and I have now been together 10 years.
And I think our relationship is even stronger now, because of everything that we have gone through.
There were days that I would hate him.
Because it had been a rough day.
But at the end of the day I love him even more because of how strong he was there in the NICU for Ashtyn.
And how much he supported me.
There are days that I think he would say the same thing.
You know, when I was up there at Children’s Mercy.
And he knew that he was down here working, but I was up there for her.”
Jeremy:
“My ex-wife lost three babies before six months, so that is when I really started to worry about her.
When the six months was coming along.
Of course, when she would lose them, I’d get angry and mad.
And she got sad.
So I lost my faith.
‘Why me?’
When Kelley got pregnant, all I could think about was that six month mark.
We have to hit that six month mark.
That's why, when Dr. DeHart was like, “She’ll be okay, she’ll be okay...”
And then we hit 24 weeks and she was born…
I just kept thinking, ‘Man, what have I done to deserve all of this?’
Kelley started calling people, the prayer groups.
Maggie, she had a prayer group, The Sisters of Philadelphia.
And they’re a long ways from home.
And they were praying for my little girl.
They had no clue who she was.
Everybody just started praying.
Her cousin down in Derby.
Her mom and dad.
Then you just see the outcome of it all.
There is definitely power in prayer.
Medicines healed some of the things that she came through.
But there is somebody there guiding her and helping her.
It definitely changed my vision on things.”
Kelley:
“She got RSV and was in the PICU in November.
It was the first time we had ever been back since she was discharged.
I knew the resident.
I had just trained her on the computer, like the week before at work.
She goes, “She’s a 24-weeker?”
“Yea.”
“Well okay, when was the last time she was admitted here?”
“She hasn’t been since the day she was discharged.”
“No, no, no…that doesn’t happen.”
“Yes it does.”
My parents are retired and they stay home with her.
Ashtyn has an amazing home daycare.
Shawndel loves her like she is her own.
This woman gives them hugs and kisses, and loves them.
We have an amazing physician that listens to us and has a great team.
We’ve been able to keep her out for three years.
The resident said, “She is a unicorn NICU kid. It’s not heard of that they’re not back.”
When Melissa approached me on Facebook to contact you, part of me, and I think Jeremy would say the same thing, feels guilty about telling our story.
Because we are still friends with Mason, the other 24-weeker, who is not walking still.
Who has a shunt.
Jen, whose son has Down Syndrome, and has all of these other problems…
Jeremy’s friends, whose daughter was a 24-weeker also, has cerebral palsy.
We look at Ashtyn and we’re like...we played Russian roulette...
And we won.
She may not be on the growth chart for height or weight, but she has perfect vision.
And she can hear.
She has 10 fingers.
And 10 toes.
And she is as sassy as sassy can be.
We are so blessed.
People have asked me if I want to have another baby.
I say, “Why? That’s selfish.”
Why would I ask that of God?
He answered all of my prayers.
I am so high-risk.
And He has given me three beautiful children.
I just feel like it would be so selfish to ask again.
Because I have all of these friends that we have met along the way, that went through the same journey, and do not have the outcome that we do.
Even Ellen, she would come to our house, and she would say, “I love coming to your house because she’s doing so awesome. Having a really bad day and ending the day at your house makes the day worthwhile.”
And that’s so nice to hear.”
Editor:
“I have sat with a pole vaulter that is missing part of his brain.
I sat with his parents and listed to their story.
And I sat with him on a different day and captured the story from his perspective.
And they were the first people who said that very same thing to me.
They were there in the ICU waiting room.
They talked about families that would come and go.
The families that got the bad news.
That survivors guilt.
When you do have a favorable outcome or a miraculous outcome…
There is a burden there.”
Kelley:
“We want to meet up with Mason and see him.
We’re going to do it, but there’s that piece of me that is like...‘I feel guilty to put them in the same room because of where she’s at compared to where Mason is at.’
And all that they’ve gone through…
Mason has had to go back in to the hospital.
When we just haven’t had that.
We’re very blessed.
Very, very blessed.
The way it has affected the girls...
The way they talk about their sister.
They will tell people what she’s gone through.
And to hear it from their perspective is amazing.
They will say, “My sister was so tiny and she was so sick. My mom had to be up there, and that’s where my mom had to be.”
We’ll tease and say we’re going to have another baby.
“You can’t have another baby. It’s not good for you. You can’t have another baby!”
“Kayla, I’m not going to have another baby. I know. I know I’m blessed to have the three of you, and I’m not having any more babies.”
She had discussions at school about 24-weekers, and decisions you have to make, and those kinds of things.
Things kids at her age shouldn’t ever have to deal with.
But you’re thrown into this situation in life that you have to deal with. It affected everyone.
We definitely had an amazing family support and friend support.
You never would know that you have it, until you need it.
Then it is amazing that you have it.”
Jeremy:
“Surround yourself with positive people.
And you get positive effects.
There were kids whose families were never there.
We were there constantly.
And the hard work paid off.”
Kelley:
“Dr. Dorn had told us this would be a team effort.
On day one he told us, “This is a team effort. Breastfeeding increases IQ. Reading to her also increases IQ. Especially at this gestational age, reading to her.”
So that was the girls’ job.
They had to pick out a book and bring it to the NICU.
And they had to read to her in her isolette.
Mommy gave mommy’s milk and they had to read to her, so they were also helping to boost her IQ.
So that was part of their role.
For her first birthday, we donated 37 books back to the NICU.
And the first cover of the book has her story on it.
For other parents.
To give them hope.
Hope that they too can leave the NICU with their baby.”
Copyright © 2017 by One Million Miracles. All Rights Reserved.
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We are Jeremy and Kelley, and we live in Wichita, Kansas. In the midst of our daughter being born at 24 weeks, we are Miracle Story #21.