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Cassie was having a very normal pregnancy, until her 20-week ultrasound.
I was about four to five months along. I felt fine, wasn’t sick or nothing else.
At her scheduled ultrasound, her obstetrician in Kearney said she had a baby who had a small
hole in his abdomen, which didn’t close during development and allowed his GI tract
to stay outside of his body in the amniotic fluid. A birth defect called gastroschisis.
She’s like, “Hmm, there’s something here.” And she thought it was gastroschisis,
but she wanted me to go to Omaha to make sure.
Her obstetrician referred her to The Nebraska Medical Center maternal fetal medicine service.
It was kind of overwhelming; being a first-time mom and having something wrong.
We take the parents through the NICU; have them meet the NICU nurses and other staff
so that they some familiarity with who was going to be taking care of their babies so
that they are confident that their baby is going to receive the best care. We had a nice
plan in place for the day of Braxton’s delivery. When it was time for Braxton to be delivered,
everyone assembled: the neonatology team (which includes a neonatologist physician, a neonatal
nurse practitioner nurse who’s available 24-7, transport team (to transport the baby
from labor and delivery to the NICU), bed-side nurses and respiratory therapists. All gathered
together for the delivery of Braxton, and that’s in addition to the high-risk maternal
fetal medicine team and all of the nurses and techs that would be involved in a regular
delivery. Once he was born, we stabilized him and transported him to the NICU where
we could further manager his abdominal wall defect.
They took me down to the NICU and I got to see him for the first time. We couldn’t
hold me, we could just touch him. He was on the ventilator and that night, he went back
to surgery. We were working so hard to get his bowel inside
his abdomen and we couldn’t have that upset by moving him back and forth from her arms.
But as soon as it was absolutely safe, we let Cassie hold Braxton and she just flowed
when he was placed in her arms.
It was awesome. I couldn’t stop smiling or kissing him.
We worked closely in consultation with pediatric surgeons and neonatologists to help maintain
the health of the bowel and to work with the surgeons to put the bowel back in the abdomen.
We also worked with Braxton to provide him very good IV nutrition to maintain his growth
and development and to protect his liver.
Braxton’s parents were involved beautifully from the start. They were very confident in
their ability as parents to participate in his care, placing his tubes, changing his
dressings. They were very active and involved parents. Our nurses work very closely with
the parents to teach them the skills that they’ll need to take the babies home even
when they have complicated medical needs at discharge.
They have awesome doctors, excellent nursing staff. I love every single one of them. I
miss them. This is Braxton, that’s TR. Thank you to the awesome nurses and the wonderful
doctors at The Nebraska Medical Center. Braxton wouldn’t be with us, if they weren’t here
and didn’t do the things that they had to do.