I recently had a beautiful baby girl and wanted to share my story with your readers to perhaps help another mother not suffer the loss of losing a child. I’m a very healthy, average 24 year old female. I’ve had two previous, healthy little boys who are both thriving. When I became pregnant a third time and learned it was a girl, I was ecstatic. My due date was April 1st, 2010, and I couldn’t wait to have a little girl to add to my happy family.
My pregnancy was normal with the exception of a weekly injection of progesterone, since I’d had both of her brothers preterm, for unknown reasons. I wasn’t worried, as my pregnancy seemed to be progressing nicely and I came back clean for all of the pregnancy screenings they did. I got sick around Thanksgiving, a typical cold that was going around locally. When Christmas rolled around and I was still sick, I was a little concerned but attributed it to job stress and my unwillingness to take antibiotics for fear of harming my little girl. New Year’s came and went and I was still sick, with bouts of cough, fever, runny nose, and overall aches, but nothing too severe. It just seemed to linger no matter how much rest I got.
I finally relented and on January 6, got antibiotics from my ob/gyn at my regularly scheduled appointment. He checked me and indicated everything was perfect with my daughter, prescribed me cough syrup and an antibiotic, and scheduled my next visit in two weeks. Little did I know, I would never be able to use those antibiotics. I left after the visit and went to get the prescriptions filled, but wouldn’t be able to pick them up until the next day, Thursday the 7th. I went home, ate some dinner, and got the urge to take pictures of my beautiful little girl inside my belly, thinking I hadn’t taken many this pregnancy. I went to work the next morning feeling fine, but achy.
I met up with husband at lunch and complained of a low backache. Though being the fanatic I am about pregnancy, I knew this could be an early labor sign, it wasn’t strong pain, but more of the flu ache. I also had an unusual discharge from my eyes and felt hot. He advised me to eat and take it easy for my last two hours at work. As he was driving me back, I threw up. It was unlike me, as I hadn’t had much morning sickness and hadn’t been throwing up throughout my battle with the cold/flu I had.
I went home, changed clothes, and went back to work. I commented to my co-worker I couldn’t wait to get home and take a hot shower, my back was so achy. I went to pick up my son from my mother’s house at 5:30pm and she asked how I was feeling. I complained of back pain and mild cramps but, once again, nothing serious, and I stayed to chat with her for approximately thirty minutes. She’d picked up my antibiotics from the pharmacy and I headed home to take them and rest.
I took a bath once I arrived and laid down with my husband to watch tv at 7:15 pm. Shortly after lying down, the cramping worsened in my abdomen. Around 7:30, my husband grabbed his phone and began timing them. They were twenty seconds apart and a minute in duration-he was concerned and insisted we head to the hospital. We then gathered our sons and drove to the hospital. Over the fifteen minute drive, the pain got increasingly worse, and once we arrived I knew something was wrong.
We arrived at 8pm. I was able to walk into the hospital and up to the second labor and delivery floor, and changed into a gown.I was hooked up to the monitor but the nurse saw no contractions at all. She believed I was dehydrated and admitted me overnight to get an IV that would hydrate me, as upon admission I had a fever of 105. The contractions got worse as she filled out paperwork and asked admitting questions, and as I answered I asked for medicine, as I was crying through the pain. She replied that she’d paged my ob/gyn and once she did a vaginal exam, she could give me something to stop the “uterine irriation” I was experiencing.
I begged for medicine (I’d had my other two with an epidural, with a 5 hour labor and a 7 hour labor) as she began the pelvic exam. Almost instantly she announced my bag was about to burst and I was going to deliver tonight. I was in so much pain and so hot at that point I barely responded except to say I “needed medicine”. I was 28weeks and 3 days, much earlier than my other two sons, and had been to the doctor the day before and was measuring perfectly-what was going on? They wheeled me to the room over and paged my doctor again. The nurse then told me I’d have to transfer to the next bed, and as I protested and screamed through the pain, she and another nurse lifted me to the bed over-as they set me down, my water broke.
I felt like I was dreaming. Everything was happening so fast and seemed so surreal. As I screamed and they prepared to hook up the IV and monitoring equipment, I got the urge to pee. I weighed my choices and decided I was in too much pain to leave the bed, and would just go where I was-I did and my little girl popped out, in that one push, at 8:39pm. There was still no doctor there, and the nurses, though shocked as I was, grabbed her and took her to monitor almost instantly. I wasn’t even allowed to hold her, and though she was quickly whisked away, I was in too much pain to notice.
As they cleaned me up and I delivered the placenta, I asked to call my mom. They handed me the phone and my husband answered (he’d left to drop the kids off-they wouldn’t allow him in with the kids). I told him “I had her” and he didn’t even respond, just dropped the phone and ran to the car. They wouldn’t tell me anything about her condition and when he got there, they would tell him minimal information-they were “working on her” and she was “tiny”. After four hours, the pediatrician came in to talk to us.
My baby girl, Liliana Angel, was just 2lbs, 2ozs. She had been resucitated three times since birth and hadn’t taken a breath on her own. They had her on a breathing tube and, unable to get an IV in her veins, had IVs through her stomach and foot. Her prognosis wasn’t good. Dr. Klein, the pediatrician, let us know her chance of surviving through the night wasn’t good. They’d been trying to stabilize her enough to fly her to Phoenix, to the nearest neonatal hospital, for four hours. I spent the next thirty minutes crying and praying, as my husband prepared to drive to Phoenix (two hours away by car, 45 minutes by helicopter).
My mother arrived as Liliana (Lily, for short) was being placed in the helicopter. She stopped the paramedics and asked if this was “Baby Lily” and let them know she was Grandma. They uncovered her face and she was allowed to see her-as she learned later, the only time she’d see her. As my husband began the drive, my mom and I cried together, wishing the best for our baby girl. My nurse explained they’d call as soon as they arrived if she passed away on the flight. They were set to arrive around 1am, and when 2am came and went with no call, I had renewed hope. They gave me sleeping medicine, but I couldn’t sleep without knowing how my baby girl was.
My husband arrived at 2:30am and the doctors were still “working on her”. At 3:30am with still no call from the doctor, I had even more hope she may be okay. My husband called at 3:40 to let me know they were waiting for blood to arrive from the blood bank as a last resort to save Baby Lily-at this point, she was having seizures and her blood pressure was extremely high. I cried, and as I was on my cell phone with him, my hospital phone rang. I handed my cell to my mom to talk to him and answered, and it was the pediatrician. He was brief and frank, and informed me despite their best efforts, my daughter had passed away at 3:39am, January 8th. I thanked him and tried to hold it together as I hung up, sobbing.
Apparently, Lily had gone into severe kidney failure, liver failure, and respiratory failure upon arrival in Phoenix, and had never recovered. I didn’t understand-my other two sons were born early, though not that early, and with low birthweights and been fine. I knew many other couples with even smaller babies who’d been fine with medical intervention. I was in shock, though my fever instantly went away with the birth, as did my cold symptoms. I spent the next two weeks planning my daughter’s funeral and wondering what had happened. I went for a two week postpartum with my ob/gyn where he gave me the shocking news. “Your daughter had cultures done after birth, and they just came back this morning”.
I prepared for the verdict I’d heard constantly over the past two weeks, that “things just happen”, but in reality I had no idea what I was about to hear. “Lily had H-influenza” he explained, “it’s not the same thing as Swine Flu. It’s an extremely rare disease that affects only about 2 out of every 100,000 in the United States, and kills only about 3 people every year nationally”. I was shocked. I’d never heard of H influenza, and as the doctor reassured me it was nothing I’d done and not much was known about it, I mentally began questioning myself. What could I have done differently to save Lily? Was it the seafood? The exposure to cigarette smoke at my workplace? I got home and began researching H-influenza online.
I soaked up information from various medical websites. I didn’t understand how Lily had gotten this, so severely it had caused multiple organ failure, and it had killed her. How hadn’t they known throughout the course of my prenatal treatment? What I learned would break my heart; H influenza is a disease transmitted through the vagina by the carrier mother. The cause? Not getting the proper immunizations as an infant. It all clicked when I read that paragraph.
I’d been adopted as an infant from South America, with little to no prenatal/infant care. The DTap vaccine that most of us parents in 2010 regard as standard was not standard in the 80’s, when I was born. It was, in fact, not developed until the late 80’s. I never received the vaccine, a fact that was overlooked until Liliana’s birth and subsequent death. If I had received the vaccine, Lily never would have contracted the virus and died. My sons would not have been born early.
I learned that at the time of Lily’s delivery, I was septic and had I kept her inside any longer, I would have died along with my daughter. Since most adults have either had the DTaP vaccine or are immune, it’s not something regularly screened for during pregnancy. The antibiotics given to me after Lily’s birth remedied my sickness, but it was too late for her. After her death, I became passionate about keeping other mothers-to-be informed about H-influenza and prevention. All it takes is the vaccine, and for any mothers born in the 80’s or countries outside the US its worth the research to see if you had the DTaP vaccine (Pertussis,Diptheria,Tetanus) that would prevent H-Influenza.
Though it’s a vaccination standard now that we take for granted, it would have saved my daughter’s life had I received this vaccine as a child. Though it’s too late for Lily, I highly encourage all expectant mothers and those trying to conceive, especially those born in the 80’s to obtain vaccination records from infancy on, to see if they received the vaccine. We as mothers are so careful with our child’s immunisation records, why not ours? Losing a child is devastating and if just one mother researches her vaccination history, sees she did not get this vaccine, and gets it, resulting in a healthy pregnancy and beautiful baby, I will have done my job in preserving Lily’s legacy. It’s a quick, simple thing to do that can save the life of your unborn child. Do it for Lily Angel.
