Tommy’s Story

Family of 5, decided to go camping for one night, a month before we were supposed to become 6. I started bleeding in the middle of the night and happened to be camping with someone who had Starlink. We were able to call an ambulence who met us on the highway and took us to McCall Hospital. As I was being prepped for an emergency C-section, the OB noticed that baby was looking way smaller than he should have been at 36 weeks. We were loaded onto Air St. Lukes and flown to Downtown Boise with baby's heart rate dropping. As soon as we got into a room everything seemed to calm down. Tommy's heart rate came back up, the bleeding stopped and they continued to monitor us for 24 hours but decided we could go home. During that 24 hours we did some extensive ultrasounds and found out that Tommy was very small. Measuring 28-31 weeks. We also noticed an omphalocele with the possibility of about 4 organs being out of his body at birth. We were told he might have Trisomy, his heart had some concerns and he might not make it after birth or might only live a few years. "Almost lethal diagnosis" is what we were told and then sent home to try and make it to 37 weeks. The following night the bleeding started again, I wasn't too concerned as we had learned my placenta wasn't very healthy and we were expecting issues. As it increased I realized it was time to go in. As we pulled into the E.R. parking lot, I stepped out of the car and started bleeding very heavily, I made it into the emergency room and was rushed back. It took a minute but they found babies heart beat and let me know we would start getting ready for a c-section. Moments later I was told by the faces around me that things had suddenly become more urgent. We were told things were about to get crazy but they had everything under control. We had an emergency c-section and Tommy was born. He had surgery day one of life to fix the omphalacele and lots of tests and echo's. We did genetic testing and found out Tommy has a rare chromosome deletion and life will look a little different for us but he's one in a million. We stayed in the NICU for 35 days and are so grateful for the support from Clemy's Crew that helped get us through that time. Driving back and forth every day between my NICU baby and our 3 olders was hard but they made it a little easier. So blessed with all the amazing people we've met along our journey.