Finding out that you're pregnant can be one of the most exciting moments of your life.
There's nothing quite like going to that first ultrasound and getting a glimpse of your future child. Hearing their heartbeat is another hugely emotional moment for most parents-to-be.
But nothing is quite as heart-wrenching as finding out that there's something wrong with your unborn baby.
When this mom was at her 17-week ultrasound, she thought she was going to find out her baby's gender. Instead, she was told her baby had a health problem.
It wasn't until five weeks later that she found out her baby had gastroschisis, a condition in which babies are born with their intestines outside their bodies.
Fortunately, the rest of her pregnancy went pretty smoothly. However, when she went into labor seven weeks early, she knew her baby was in for a long recovery.
[H/T: Imgur]
The baby's mom tells LittleThings:
We found out about her condition when we went to a place that does ultrasounds. I was about 17 weeks and we went in for a gender check.
The woman doing the ultrasound couldn't figure out Cedar's gender and told us there was something wrong with the baby, but she didn't know what. She told us to go to the hospital ASAP.
When I was 22 weeks, we went to a local women’s clinic and they were able to diagnose her with gastroschisis, which is a common condition in young mothers and drug users.
It is not genetic. 1 in 40 babies have this condition in Utah, and 1 in 1,000 babies in the US have it. My future appointments were at a hospital 20-30 minutes away from my home, and they were every 2 weeks.
My water broke Monday, March 6th, but I didn’t know it. It wasn’t until Thursday that I started going into active labor. I didn’t sleep until 6:30 am, then I woke up 2 hours later in intense pain.
I texted my husband that we needed to go to the hospital. He picked me up soon after and we rushed to the hospital. When they checked to see if I actually was in labor, they said I had completely ruptured and the sac was drained.
I ended up being in labor for 29 hours. My daughter was 7 weeks premature. They cut her umbilical cord and immediately took her away. I only saw a glimpse of her.
I couldn't see her for another 2 hours because I had to fully recover from the epidural I had. When I finally got to see her, her tiny hand could barely wrap around my index finger.
They had her intestines in a bag with a little tie on top to help her intestines go back inside her body.
She was on a ventilator, she had a PICC line on the top of her head, a tube in her stomach to drain it of bile and blood from the pressure of her intestines, and numerous cords tracking her heart, SPO2, and everything in between.
This would be her life for the next 4 weeks. Her intestines went in after 6 days, and they sewed her up when she was a week old.
The first time I got to hold her was when she was 2 weeks old and her little tummy was healed. The suction to her tummy was now removing blood, which wasn’t a good sign. The darker the color of the blood, the better.
This suction was removing fresh blood for a few days, but it slowed to sucking out bile. She was moved to the "feeders and growers" part of the NICU (the less at-risk babies) when she was almost 3 weeks old. She developed sleep apnea and they had to closely monitor that.
She was able to come home on April 9th on an apnea monitor and oxygen. Things still were rocky. At almost every feeding, she threw up everything she had eaten.
This went on for a few weeks until her pediatrician prescribed her Ranitidine and Neosure, a formula specifically designed for premature babies. In June, she got off her oxygen. She's still on her apnea monitor. Her doctors are surprised by how amazing she's doing, mostly by coming home as soon as she did.
Developmentally, she’s right up there with her age, even though she should be with her gestational age. She’s always surprising us.
If you’re inspired by this tiny baby’s strength and perseverance, please SHARE this article with your friends!
