My Survival Story
David Micheal Crovo was born via C-section on 4/27/2024. Throughout the pregnancy I had normal prenatal care, ultrasound at 9 weeks, 14 weeks, 20 weeks, 24 weeks, 28 weeks. I was told everything looked normal and the baby was healthy. While I was pregnant I worked as a preschool teacher and at 31 weeks pregnant I fell at school. After 5 hours of contractions my coworkers convinced me to go to the hospital to be checked out. Upon arrival I was having consistent contractions but I was not progressing or dilating. Despite the medicine I was given to stop contractions, they continued. The next morning the doctors were going to let me leave after an ultrasound to make sure everything was okay with the baby.
I had mychart connected to my email and I had read the results before the doctor could come talk to me. It said pleural effusion? UH what, I thought... I turned to google… okay so its fluid around the baby's organs that can turn into hydrops which can be fatal..... my heart sank. Then the doctor came in, pulled a chair up and told me I needed to go see the maternal-fetal medicine (MFM) specialist/ high risk OBGYN, and that she couldn't answer many of my questions.
Before I was discharged from the hospital I already had an appointment scheduled in a couple hours to go see the high risk obgyn. When my husband and I got there the doctor was in the room with us and the ultrasound tech. He was directing the tech on what he wants to see, he then gets his phone out and leaves the room. He came back in and told us to come with him to his office to talk. His first words... "we have a sick baby here". Oh ok, thanks, that's very comforting. He was calling Riley's Children Hospital in Indianapolis to see if we needed to go there. He told us to come back in 24 hours, we'll do another scan and it will give him time to connect with the doctors at Rileys to talk about things. At this point he still believes it is pleural effusion.
The unknown is something I dread, and at this point after everything weve been through, hate. The next 24 hours were painfully slow. Too much time spent on google, too upset to talk to anybody... oh and I had 4 other children I went home to and had to pretend everything was okay.
The next day, again the doctor was in the room guiding the ultrasound tech. Verbatim he says "ohh there's heart and lung failure here." wtf. The doctor told us to come meet him in his office again so we could talk. The doctor told us that this baby is not going to make it to June in utero, we might be lucky to get to the middle of May.. My due date was June 22nd. We had two options, we could go to Rileys, they could put a shunt in- utero (still thinking this is fetal hydrocephalus that we are dealing with) to help drain the fluid, but the baby will be delivered within the next two weeks. Or we can stay in Fort Wayne, deliver the baby within the next couple of days, and the NICU team here would be able to handle it. It was an easy choice for us, we have 4 other children here and we were looking at a 6-8 week NICU stay. We are delivering the baby here.
My husband and I didnt ever find out the gender of any of our babies until they were born, but at this point we asked the ultrasound tech to put the sex of the baby in an envelope for us. I didnt know what the road ahead of us held and I wanted to be able to pick out a name for the baby before I was in turmoil in the delivery room (as if I wasnt already).
I was told I would have to have a c-section because a team of 8-12 people need to be ready to receive the baby at delivery and it would be dangerous for the baby. Before this I had 3 vaginal deliveries with my other children, so this really upset me but I trusted my doctor. Side note- When I later looked up the information on my chart it was written down that I had to have a C-section because the baby was breach, this was not communicated to us or said ever.
I left the doctors office waiting on a call from the doctor to hear when my C-section would be scheduled. 30 minutes later he called and told me- 9am tomorrow morning, arrive at 7.... I turned to my husband, ok, we're having our baby tomorrow morning, we need to pack and arrange care for our other children.
My mom had just been admitted into the hospital and my dad recently had back surgery, they were out. We called my husband's sisters to see if they could help but they both have a lot of young children and don't live close to us, they are out. I called my best friend who has 2 young boys herself. "I have a askk for you... I have to have my baby tomorrow and I need someone to take my 3 kids while my husband and I are in the hospital." She talked to her husband and without hesitation they said yes.
I was only 31 weeks… with my 4th pregnancy… I had nothing prepared at the house. When I was stressing about this to my family they told me not to worry, I’ll have time to prepare after I have the baby because the baby will not be coming home soon. As if that is supposed to make me feel better. I had 12 hours to get me and my other children packed for the next couple of days, I had to focus on that. My husband and I got very little sleep that night. We didnt have time to process what was going on and everything was happening fast.
The next morning we dropped our kids off and headed to the hospital. I was struggling with my asthma at this point, I was coughing a lot but it didnt change the plans. They took my husband and I back, I was terrified. But I received my spinal block and everything was ok…. or as ok as it could be. David was intubated immediately, we didnt get to hold him and he was taken to the NICU quickly. An hour later when I was in recovery the neonatologist came to tell my husband and I that our baby actually had a birth defect called CDH (congenital diaphragmatic hernia)... From what they could see on the x-ray his intestines were in his right chest cavity, and he would need surgery. I cant remember what was going through my head at this point, it was too much and there was nothing I could do.
When we made it upstairs to see David there was a team of doctors and the surgeons were there. David was hooked up to soo many machines, he had IVS everywhere. Now it was a waiting game to see when he would be strong enough for surgery. David had pulmonary hypertension and they had to make sure he was stable before they could operate. If he needed ECMO he would have to be flown to Rileys.
So we waited... for 5 days we couldnt hold him, or touch him without gloves on. I felt numb through most of this, still trying to comprehend what was going on with my baby. David did not end up needing ecmo and when he was 5 days old they decided it was time for surgery. I have a vivid memory of 4 nurses and 2 doctors walking away with my baby unsure if I would see him breathing again after this. They told us it would take 2 hours for his surgery, then the 3 hour mark came... and then the 4 hour mark. When the surgeons came to talk to us after surgery they explained that his intestines and liver were up in his right chest cavity but they were able to get them down and stitch the hole in his diaphragm.
Davids NICU stay was 30 days of ups and downs. They would lower his oxygen, then he would need more, then he would need a different medicine to and hopefully not effect anything else. He was intubated for 2 weeks, on oxygen for 27 days, had an NG tube for 29 days, and they sent us home on day 30. By the end of his NICU stay I struggled to go and sit with him, the constant beeping in the rooms started triggering me. Its hard for me to admit but I didnt want to go, I sat and looked at my son.. tried to breastfeed, which failed.. tried to comfort him but he felt foreign to me. I felt shame, anger, I was questioning everything at this point. Looking back I wish I wouldve stayed more, the NICU is a hard place to be and because I had never gone home with my baby it was all very confusing for me. My husband went back to work two weeks after David was born and he would drive me to the hospital every morning so I could spend the day with David. With every passing day it felt defeating. How am I supposed to go home and sleep without my baby? But I had 4 other children at home that also needed me. The day the doctor told us we were going home I was shocked, I didnt feel ready, he didnt feel ready to come home. We also had no idea it was so close, we thought he still had 2 weeks to a month in the NICU. But we made arrangements and starting crossing things off the list so we could bring him home. He had to pass a 2 hr car seat test, yup.. where he sits in the car seat for 2 hours and we make sure his oygen doesn't drop. He passed the first try... and we were headed home!
