Amazing Grace and her miraculous story of survival!

So many thoughts and emotions ran through my heart and head when I wrote todays title. What an awesome journey that Chris and I are blessed to be a part of. So here is the story of Grace Marie's incredible birth!

Chris and I had deep convicted feeling about keeping the possible baby names to ourselves only when we were expecting Grace. We always felt peace in knowing that when we looked upon our child's face for the very first time we would know. Oh, yes, I knew! It was the briefest of all moments but I knew that she was our Grace Marie.

I believe that God reveals Himself at the perfect moments and in his Utmost Highest ways when we need Him most, and, do we not need it most, when we feel that we have all things, moving the way that they should be, albeit sometimes slow, with detours or blazing fast moments but with no surprise twists or turns. Well, this is how I felt the morning of July 16th, 2005.

Chris and I just moved into our new home, our current home, the weekend of July 1st. So yes, we were unpacking and doing all those things. I woke up that beautiful and hot Saturday morning and tried to once again get into the mood to unpack and organize. It was futile, I just wanted to go shopping. So I headed down to my favorite store, The Container store, to get some all important things, right, to organize the house better! I remember thinking that our sweet little one was not moving very much that day. I usually awoke to her kicking and I absolutely loved to lay in bed on my side and enjoy feeling her moving. I do not recall her moving that morning and then I did not feel her moved the 35 miles down GA-400 to the store. A mental note that I put in the back of my head.

Well, of course I had an amazing time finding all the things that I needed.  I went to another store and once again I did not feel our little one moving. After I made it home   I sat down to read my book about kick counts. I felt that our baby was probably getting bigger and that is why I did not feel much however, I felt that I needed to make sure. 


I drank some lemonade and ate a piece of lemon cake. Ugh, it was all so sweet that had to make anyone move. Well, I got two or three very soft movements in 45 minutes. I waited 15 more minutes, nothing, ate and drank some more and then within 30 minutes I got three or four more soft movements. I called my OB's office, and Dr. Soufi, called me back as she was on-call. She told me to come on down and they would put me on the monitor. I went up and told Chris and he was a little covered in paint being that he was painting the ceiling for me!!! He said, do I have time to take a shower, I said oh, yeh, they are just going to put me on the monitor, but make it a quick one. 

Now let me explain my mindset here, my mother had five children all vaginally, the fifth was all-natural and all of the babies were born past their due dates, some three weeks past the due dates as my birth was. So of course I just assumed that my child would be born at least a week past my due date which was, August 16th, 2005. I was also planning on a natural delivery. We hired a dula, Penny Gilchrist, and we were just checking things off of our to-do list and moving right along, we thought!

So I grabbed my cell phone and purse and off to Northside we go.(yes, oh, so naive).

OH, on a side note, the picture below is of Grace in NICU POD A, at N'side Main. She is 3 days old in this picture. She was very sick and it showed in her earlier pictures, so I want to keep those close to my heart and private for now...


Once I am on the monitor we do another sugar/kick test. By this time I never wanted anything sweet to eat, again. She barely moved, they said I was having contractions but I didn't realize it, or feel it. I was not in labor. Her heart rate was very low around 110 when it should of been around 160.

Here is where I get chills because as I type I know that is when God had us all in his arm's, holding us tight against His chest, keeping us from all harm with peace and contentment. 

There was a bad thunderstorm that night which delayed Dr. Soufi in getting to the hospital. Our RN was a traveling RN from California who was actually a mid-wife. She was very attentive to us and knew my faith and desires for a natural delivery. She reached in close to me with so much love and concern letting me know that if I was her patient she would say, your baby is in trouble we need to get her now. Then everything went so fast and effiicient, the blood, the prep, the epi-dural and then Dr. Soufi arrived, and I was rushed into surgery. Now that I have had two c-sections, I realize how fast the first one was, very fast until Grace came out. I will never forget how still and quiet it was, except for all the machines and then Apgar of 1, resusitation, then a while later Apgar of 8, thank you, Jesus, 3 pounds and 13 ounces, 16.5" at 11:42 pm, on July 16th, 2005. I got to see Grace for a second or two and then she was rushed to the NICU. I begged Chris to stay with her and take care of her no matter what. Yes, very dramatic, I know, but excuse me, we did not know why this happened and why she was so small. I was not sure that I would see them again!

 Then a long silence, but so much peace, more peace than I could of imagined. It felt like an eternity before I was brought into recovery. Dr. Soufi and the others kept saying I can't believe how small she is with so much concern. Once in recovery, the Neonatologist checked in with us, gave us her first picture and informed us that she was a very sick little girl.

My body was so tired and stressed that I do not remember much until the next day, Sunday morning, which was the last day of our birthing class when they were going to go over c-sections and if something goes wrong! God's timing is perfect I might have been freaking out if I had that class before, we will never know!

They told me that I could not go see Grace until I got off the epi-dural and could do a couple of others things that I had to do, so I tried hard, did not succeed the first time but was so determined to try again within the hour. Now off to see her. She was so tiny and so swollen and still we could barely see her skin on her face because of the respirator. We could not touch her except to cup her head without moving because any movement would be painful.

Then I got hysterical, once, I was back in my room. I was so swollen everywhere and just kept crying and crying. Every now and then I would hear a baby cry in the rooms next to me, which made me cry too, because my baby was fighting for her life in another area and I couldn't be with her or help her. The doc kept calling me and there were visits trying to get more answers on what was wrong with her from our family history. Everyone was clueless!!! So they just decided to treat her like she had a BAD infection. But her platelets were fatally low, 17,000 to 19,000 and they needed to be at 150,000. After day 3 things were not completely stable due to her platelet counts but they were getting better.

On day 4 at the very last hours that I could stay my blood pressure started to rise. I almost stayed another day but they decided that I was just anxious because I had to leave Grace behind, which I was. It was so awful leaving the hospital, I just cried and cried as we pulled away. We made calls to the NICU checking on her and we continued to get calls on her progress and from the research departments that were still trying to figure out what was wrong and how to correct it.

She got off the respirator and was on the BIPAP and then a CPAP (can't remember the order) and then we gradually got to see her face. Grace was on an IV for the first few days and then went to gavage feeding (through a tube) for a couple of weeks. We finally got to see her eyes open on day 5, she just starred hard into our eyes, constantly! Never moving her gaze away from us. Chris and I cherish these individual moments so much. We eventually got to see her move on her own during the 2nd week and hold her, kangaroo style! Immediately after skin on skin her platelets seemed to stabolize! All in all Grace had to have five platelet transfusions.Then we finally heard her, oh, how beautiful, finally a cry, a sound, anything, it was so wonderful. Oh, how strong sweet baby Grace is! She amazed everyone on how fast she was recovering at this point.

Day 22, Friday late afternoon, we passed the car seat test etc. just waiting to be released. The ride home, she was so tiny that it seemed like she stopped breathing a couple of time in the seat on the way home.

So basically no one ever new why and how. Once she was home it was business as usual except for a few more appointment with the pediatrician due to her small size, just at 5 lbs. All of the physicians left the past in the past and said sometimes we never know. I had a couple of clots in the placenta and the cord was around her neck but she was so tiny that it was not harmful to her, and there was the beginning of placenta abruptio, but that was it. No more anwers to my questions from anyone. Until, I got pregnant with Gabrielle, they immediately, did lots of blood testing. My labs came back positive for Factor V leiden mutation and phospholipid anti-body syndrome. Well, that must be it, what happened with Grace.

What a miracle for Grace and Mommy. Little did we know but I had a 80% chance of dying during my pregnancy, delivery and post-delivery. Amazing Grace and Our incredible Father, saved us both!