17 years ago… at 445am my water broke!!! This was definitely not the plan! Lilee was ready to make her debut! Well in about 14 hours!!! I had my amniocentesis… and we waited…. Finally… right before I was supposed to start pushing… they came in to give me the results of the amnio… She tested negative for CF, and Down Syndrome… I’m not sure whether it was because I was so young and dumb, and had no clue what a perforation in her intestine actually meant… and didn’t realize that just because she didn’t have one of those chromosomal disorders… she still would be REALLY sick…. I put all of that out of my mind! I even remember telling the nurse… whom had been caring for me all day… “Did you hear??? She’s going to be OK!!!” Well… at 6:27pm… my world was rocked… my heart was broken! Lilee was born… but she was most definitely not fine!!! She was not crying… She was grey… She was lethargic… Her abdomen was so distended… you could see little veins all over. They let me see her for a split second… I held her on my chest… but knew she should not be there… she needed help… and she needed it now!!! They took her away in a panic… and then we waited.
I waited for any type of update… but no one would tell us anything… I had no idea if she was alive, or had died… was she going to be ok??? So many questions… and all we could do was wait… hope for the best… but after what I saw… I knew it was bad!
Finally, they brought her into us… she was in an incubator covered in wires, and tubes… They were not positive that she would make it for the drive to Children’s Hospital, so they wanted us to see her and say our goodbyes… just in case… Her Daddy baptized her with holy water from the chaplain… we said our goodbyes… and then she was wheeled away.
I was left with really no hope. She was too sick… this was bad… really bad… and we all knew it. I was left with these two pictures… printed out on computer paper…. When you have never really seen a “sick” baby… when you have never seen a baby with breathing tubes, or IV’s… these images were the scariest thing EVER!!! I just kept staring at them…. But it is an image that was so hard to see….
I was surrounded by all of my family and friends… they were there to talk with me, to cry with me… to just sit there with me and wait for any bit of news… I had messages from friends/ phone calls… even had Foley’s delivered with encouraging notes written on the styrofoam containers… Lilee had a fan club… an army of people and their prayers with her…
I hope she knew how loved she was… I am pretty sure she knew… and that is why she was such a fighter!