Avery's Story

We found on June 14th we were expecting a baby! That morning I realized my period was almost a week late, had an upset stomach, and my boobs were really sore. I was in the shower and it hit me, holy cow, I am pregnant. Got to work and took about 4 tests before I realized that there were two lines present. I ran up to Eric's office and showed him two, his face lit up like a light bulb!

We went to confirm our pregnany and see our precious baby for the first time on July 7th. Her heart rate was 176 and was measuring a few days ahead!

On October 5th, we went for the big ultrasound! When we were pulling out of the driveway Eric was so excited about finding out the sex of the baby, I gently reminded him that it wasn't just to find out the sex, but to make sure there were no problems for with the baby. During the ultrasound I noticed that her legs looked short. I mentioned it to the tech and she agreed that they were short. The physican came in and was very concerned about her short femurs, thought either dwarfism or downs, so they set us up to see ETSU OB-GYN to see a specialtist on Oct. 7th.

We were a bundle of nerves on our way. The ultrasound tech was great! And the physician, Dr. Welt, was amazing! He diagnosed her with Achondroplasia, reassured us it was not the fatal form but said we would need to do frequent ultrasounds just to make sure she was growing approprately for a "small" person. So every three weeks we got to see our precious baby grow and make sure she was okay.

On Feb 9th 2011 at 1206 Avery made her grand entrace and it was a traumatic one! There were two residents and the attending trying to get her out. They were tugging so hard the entire table was moving and the resident said she was surprised I wasn't bruised from my chest down. They ended up having to make my incision longer and she finally decided to cooperate :) When the nurse said she was here we waited for that much anticipated cry.......nothing. She did have a heart beat but it shortly stopped. Laying on that OR table and hearing them say start CPR was the most frightening moment of my life. They did CPR for 5 minutes and we heard the most beautiful cry in the world! They went ahead and intubated her to give her lungs some support. They let us peak at her a brief second and they wisked her to the NICU.

Around 3 pm the physician came to talk to us. He told us that she was on full support and only sating in the 60's. Our hearts broke and shattered into a thousand pieces. He said they were going to give her some surfactant and go from there.

My super awesome nurse went to visit Avery and came back down and got me up at 4:30 and took us to see her. It was hard to see her all hooked up but she was sooooo beautiful! The surfactant worked and she was looking much better.

Later that night around 3am my night nurse went to check on her and the NICU nurse had cleaned her up and put the most precious blue ribbon in her hair! It made her look like a sweet sweet girl. For this I will be forever thankful.

When we went to visit her the next morning she had a few studies done, an echo, and a baby gram where they xrayed her entire body. Although the xray had not been read by the radiologist the physician felt every thing looked good but he needed to get another chest xray. We went back a few hours later and he had her xray results. He pulled up a chair for Eric and I knew it was bad if he was pulling up a chair. The radiologist found signs of Thanatorphic Dysplasia, a fatal disease. Her ribs were flat instead of curved to allow expansion of her lungs and her vertebra are flat. Our world was over. The nurse let us hold her for the first time. It was heaven on earth! When we returned to our room we brought our parents in and gave them the news. We were all heart broken.

On Friday night our some of our friends and family members gathered to see Avery for what we didn't realize was for the last time. Avery got a unit of blood this day as her hematocrit was low and we also decided to make her a DNR incase something happened.
I woke up Saturday morning around 5:30 and wept for hours. I just knew it was Avery's home coming day. We went to see her that morning and discussed with the nurse how things would progress if we decided to withdraw care and she said we would do it however we wanted. Seh told us to come back at 1 and we could hold her and that the doc would come talk to us in the mean time. Well, we waited and waited on him to stop by. My nurse came in and she told me all the details of how everything would go. They had arranged for an early discharge for me, they would move us to a private room, and bring our stuff to us. All of this was before the physician came to talk to us, I was fairly upset by this, I wanted to talk to the physcian first and us come a decision together. It was after 1 and he still hadn't come to talk to us so I decided to call the NICU and see where he was, he was on the phone and I asked the nurse to send him down asap. He was at our room in a few minutes and he said that even if Avery didn't have the TD she sustained irreversable damage from her traumatic birth and her prognosis was not good.

So, we bravely made our way up to the NICU. Held our baby girl while she was still on the vent so we could feel her move and breathe. Eric held her for a while andthen passed her on to me. While I was holding her it appeared as if she was trying to open her eyes, she dropped her sats, and got blue around the mouth. She was having a seizure. That was the last straw for us. I handed her back to the nurse and asked if we could move to the private room before they took her off the breathing tube, with alligator tears in her eyes she said she may not make it. So we turned our backs to them and held onto each other as tightly as we could. We heard her making some of the sweetest squeaky noises and turned around. She was madder than a hornet! She was crying and beat red in the face, she was precious! We got to hold her for a while and then they moved us to a private room. She went quickly and peacefully.

When we got to the private room we were able to hold her, love on her, kiss her, dance with her, snuggle her, and even look at her cute butt! Our time then is precious and we will hold it in our hearts forever.

Love your children, love our God, for He is the one that created them!