One Ounce At A Time

Here is another article that was written about Emerson after his birth. It was written for the Heartbeat magazine which is a Ronald McDonald House publication.

As most parents and children count down the days until presents and holiday fun, Elizabeth and Carl are counting up.

Each day is yet another their son, Emerson, born three months premature and weighing only once pound, one ounce, is alive and growing.

Five months into a surprise pregnancy, Elizabeth Vincelette developed preeclampsia, or high blood pressure brought on by pregnancy, and was rushed to the hospital in Carbondale, IL. At only 26 weeks gestation, Emerson was delivered by emergency cesarean section at St. Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis. Without the quickness of surgery, doctors feared neither Elizabeth nor Emerson would have survived.

While some parents dread the sounds oh their baby crying, Elizabeth and Carl, live for it. On the fifth of September, Elizabeth and Carl first heard Emerson cry; on the sixth the couple got to at last hold their son — nearly two weeks after his birth day.

Every evening at 9 p.m. a nurse at Cardinal Glennon takes everything out of Emerson’s incubator, removes his diaper, and sets him back down on the scale built into his bed, hoping for even an ounce of weight gain.

Elizabeth and Carl are only able to hold Emerson for an hour a day because when removed from his incubator he gets too cold and burns calories to try to stabilize his body temperature. Emerson must learn to breathe on his own and fight to keep his body temperature and blood sugar regulated.

In the meantime, they play with Emerson’s toes and fingers and sing to him while praying he keeps gaining weight. He is now two pounds, two ounces.

When Emerson reaches four pounds, doctors will repair his bowel and he will be placed once again on a ventilator to help him breathe.

Elizabeth and Carl fill their days with trips back and forth from Cardinal Glennon to their room at the Ronald McDonald House. Without the warm meals prepared at night by the RMH volunteers, a bed to sleep in so close to Cardinal Glennon, and other families to bond with, Elizabeth and Carl don’t know how they would cope.

The couple looks forward to when they can bring Emerson home, or even hold him for more than an hour a day, and return to normalcy.

The Tiniest Miracle

This is an edited version of an article that appeared in our local newspaper shortly after we brought Emerson home from the hospital.

 

When Carl “Bubba” Vincelette and his wife, Elizabeth, found out they were expecting their first child last April, the couple was understandably overjoyed. After having been married for approximately five years, the Vincelettes were both shocked and thrilled to discover they would soon be first time parents. “It was a surprise,” Elizabeth told the newspaper Monday afternoon. “But we were very excited.”

Things were going along smoothly for the Vincelettes and their unborn son for the better half of the first six months of the pregnancy. “Up until about five and a half months, I had the perfect pregnancy,” Elizabeth recalled. “No morning sickness.  I felt great. I told my friends, if I’d known I’d feel this good, I would have gotten pregnant a long time ago.

But, at about the same time, trouble began to emerge for the expecting mother, as she was diagnosed with kidney stones and subsequently hospitalized. “That’s when they first noticed my blood pressure was REALLY high,” said Vincelette. “They got me on some potent blood pressure medicine and that got it under control.”

But, Elizabeth’s blood pressure issues refused to go away, eventually developing into preeclampsia, a severe disorder that occurs only during pregnancy and the postpartum period and affects both the mother and the unborn baby.

“I went back for a follow-up appointment at my OB/GYN in Energy and my blood pressure was extremely high,” she continued. “I was told to go straight to the hospital in Carbondale and told I might later be transported to St. Louis if they couldn’t get my blood pressure under control. By the time I got from Energy to Carbondale, they had already made arrangements for me to be flown to St. Louis.”

The doctors’ concern for Elizabeth’s health and the health of her unborn child prompted them to notify Elizabeth that she would almost certainly not leave the hospital until she gave birth. “I was in denial,” she told the newspaper. “I had been told at Carbondale and in St. Louis that I would not be leaving the hospital until my child was born. I planned on being there three more months. Preeclampsia seemed like just another word. It didn’t seem that bad until I realized how serious it was.”

Her condition was so serious, in fact, that after her arrival in St. Louis, doctors administered steroids to strengthen the lungs of the unborn child and waited for them to take effect, all the while hoping the required 48 hours would elapse before Elizabeth gave birth.

In the meantime, teams of doctors prepped Vincelette on the possible complications that could result from the premature birth. “Beforehand, they sent in neonatologists to prepare me on all the things that could possibly go wrong,” said Vincelette. “And I remember thinking, ‘I don’t know why they’re telling me all this, because he’s not going to come early.’”

Vincelette arrived at St Mary’s Hospital in St. Louis on a Friday night and gave birth to her first child, Emerson Alexander Vincelette, the following Wednesday. Even as doctors geared up for the emergency caesarian section, Elizabeth remained in denial as to the severity of her condition. “I had an IV hooked in my arm, another hooked up to my big toe because that was the only place they could find a vein, and they were asking me to sign waivers granting permission for them to perform the surgery. It just really hadn’t sunk in that he was going to come,” said Vincelette. “One of the nurses asked me if I had called my husband yet and I said ‘No, he’s still at work.’ She told me it might not be a bad idea to let him know I was about to give birth.”

Bubba, acting as any concerned father-to-be would, made a mad dash to the Gateway City, arriving just 30 minutes before his son was born — at just 26 weeks. “People just don’t have babies at 26 weeks,” said Elizabeth, adding that the normal gestation period is closer to 40 weeks. “I didn’t think he was coming, but he had other plans,” she said of Emerson. “He was ready to meet us,” Bubba related simply.

Part of the aforementioned preparation, according to Bubba, involved informing him that the chances of any child born weighing in at less than 500 grams were not good. “They told me just to hold him and talk to him and enjoy him for as long as I could if that was the case,” he said.

Emerson tipped the scales at just 493 grams at birth, measuring just 10 and 3/4 inches long. “He was just tiny,” Elizabeth related, holding her fingers a little more than 10 inches apart. “He was about the size of a coke can,” said Bubba. “Maybe a little bit longer.”

However, other than his low birth weight, Emerson was relatively healthy, and began battling the long odds that were stacked against him.  Emerson was immediately readied for transport to the NICU at Cardinal Glennon Children’s Medical Center.

Despite his lungs being underdeveloped due to his premature birth, he was on a respirator less than 24 hours. After a five-month convalescence, which included numerous surgeries and at times, bedside procedures, Emerson came home on January 30^th. “So many preemies have to come home attached to apnea monitors or oxygen,” Elizabeth said. But not little Emerson. No medicines for him, and no monitors, thank you very much.

Now six months old, Emerson, other than being somewhat smallish for his age, is in nearly perfect health, happy, home with his family and cutting his first teeth. Doctors, the Vincelettes say, are watching closely to make certain the veins in his eyes develop properly. “They tell us under a worst case scenario he may have to begin wearing eyeglasses at an early age,” said Elizabeth. “With all we’ve been through — we’ll take glasses.”

Vincelette said that while she and her then unborn child were treated well by doctors and the like throughout her pregnancy, she holds a special place in her heart for the doctors and staffs at Cardinal Glennon and the Ronald McDonald House, where she was put up during Emerson’s five-month hospital stay.

“I can’t say enough about the doctors, nurses and staff at Cardinal Glennon,” Vincelette related. “Our primary nurse, Kiki (Auntie Kiki to us now), did all she could to make the entire process easier. She took the time to explain all the procedures Emerson was going through, what would or could happen, and all the potential reactions to the medicine he was being given.  If Emerson was scheduled for surgery, Kiki was there, whether it was her day off or not.  By the end she was more like family than just a nurse.”

Vincelette describes the Ronald McDonald House as a home away from home. “It’s basically like a hotel, with a bed and a bathroom. They charge you five dollars per night to stay there,” she added, battling back emotions brought on by the remembrance of kindness. “That’s if you can pay. Volunteers come in and make you dinner and on the weekends make you breakfast. I just think it’s a shame that so many people in this area don’t know about the Ronald McDonald House because they’ve never had to use it,” she said. “All people know of it is it’s the little box at the McDonald’s drive-thru where they put their straw wrappers,” added Bubba. “I think if people knew that someone from their community has benefited from the Ronald McDonald House they might think about it a little differently,” said Elizabeth. “They probably wouldn’t put their straw wrappers in there,” replied Bubba, taking on the tone of a reformed man.

Vincelette’s advice for expecting mothers is to follow the direction and advice of their doctors to the letter, but listen to your own body too. “I really thought I was doing what I was supposed to,” she said. “I went to all my doctor’s appointments, read all the books filled with do’s and don’ts, took my prenatal vitamins and drank plenty of water and it still happened to me.  So, just do it all, because it really can happen to anybody.”