Meet Piper! Piper Strong!
My pregnancy was pretty uneventful. No gestational diabetes, no high-risk pregnancy, no complications, just…. uneventful.
We had just closed on our home and moved to a new town that was roughly an hour away from my doctor and hospital. This truly worried me and gave me such an uneasy feeling. About half way through my pregnancy, we decided that we wanted to be induced. We had many people ask why we would do such a thing and not let baby girl come when she is ready. I did my research on being induced and there were definitely mixed feelings. We really didn’t have an answer to why, but decided to pursue it knowing deep down that it’s what we wanted.
At 39 weeks and 1 day we headed to the hospital! We were ready to meet our baby girl! About an hour after arriving at the hospital and getting prepped, my doctor came in stating that she had been watching baby’s heart rate and it was higher than she liked. I received something for the pain and the rest is honestly a blur. I was told I was going to need an emergency C-section due to baby’s heart rate and that we were going to meet her sooner than expected! From that point on, all I remember was the shaking, the uncontrollable shaking! When Piper arrived, she was as perfect as can be! She ended up having a little fever due to an infection but she got over it quickly! And there she was. My perfect baby girl that I had been dreaming about for so long! I was in Heaven, My husband was over the moon, and our family couldn’t have been happier for us!
When we got back to our room, we tried to settle in the best we could. Piper would scream at the top of her lungs out of nowhere for about 30 seconds and then stop. She would scream to the point where she would get beet red every time and this happened over and over. Eventually the nurse took Piper to the nursery and gave us time to rest since we had her so late at night. The next morning, Piper came back into our room and was still screaming every 5 minutes or so. I thought, “Is this really normal for a newborn? It must be. No one else seems concerned.”
When it came time to give Piper her first bath, Piper started screaming like normal but this time instead of turning red, she was blue. Completely blue and she wasn’t breathing. She started seizing and she was rushed to the NICU before we could even understand what was happening.
Our daughter stayed in the NICU for 18 grueling days as doctors worked around the clock to figure out why she had those seizures. Piper had two MRI’s, an EEG, stomach ultrasound, and an echocardiogram. She was hooked up to a feeding tube, IV, and a breathing tube. We were in absolute pain as there was nothing we could do to help. After a lot of testing, the doctors eventually found that Piper had a left sided stroke sometime in utero.
This broke me.
All I felt was guilt. More and more guilt. It took me a long time to deal with this guilt and it truly never goes away… The crazy part is, is that if we did not schedule to be induced that Sunday night, the doctors don’t know if Piper would be with us... God sure works in mysterious ways!
After 18 days, we were able to take Piper home and begin the journey of PT, OT, Infectious Disease, Ophthalmology, and Neurology appointments. Fast forward Piper is almost 2 and is doing amazing!! She has an outgoing personality, and for sure shows her personality! Piper has officially been diagnosed with spastic hemiplegia secondary to her stroke. She has slight weakness and tight muscle tone on her right side, but so far that’s it! If she has more issues down the road, we will work with it and help her the best we can! She is my biggest hero and she has overcome something I didn’t even know was possible.
Piper is our perfect, spunky little girl and we are so blessed!
The Harms Family
My pregnancy was pretty uneventful. No gestational diabetes, no high-risk pregnancy, no complications, just…. uneventful.
We had just closed on our home and moved to a new town that was roughly an hour away from my doctor and hospital. This truly worried me and gave me such an uneasy feeling. About half way through my pregnancy, we decided that we wanted to be induced. We had many people ask why we would do such a thing and not let baby girl come when she is ready. I did my research on being induced and there were definitely mixed feelings. We really didn’t have an answer to why, but decided to pursue it knowing deep down that it’s what we wanted.
At 39 weeks and 1 day we headed to the hospital! We were ready to meet our baby girl! About an hour after arriving at the hospital and getting prepped, my doctor came in stating that she had been watching baby’s heart rate and it was higher than she liked. I received something for the pain and the rest is honestly a blur. I was told I was going to need an emergency C-section due to baby’s heart rate and that we were going to meet her sooner than expected! From that point on, all I remember was the shaking, the uncontrollable shaking! When Piper arrived, she was as perfect as can be! She ended up having a little fever due to an infection but she got over it quickly! And there she was. My perfect baby girl that I had been dreaming about for so long! I was in Heaven, My husband was over the moon, and our family couldn’t have been happier for us!
When we got back to our room, we tried to settle in the best we could. Piper would scream at the top of her lungs out of nowhere for about 30 seconds and then stop. She would scream to the point where she would get beet red every time and this happened over and over. Eventually the nurse took Piper to the nursery and gave us time to rest since we had her so late at night. The next morning, Piper came back into our room and was still screaming every 5 minutes or so. I thought, “Is this really normal for a newborn? It must be. No one else seems concerned.”
When it came time to give Piper her first bath, Piper started screaming like normal but this time instead of turning red, she was blue. Completely blue and she wasn’t breathing. She started seizing and she was rushed to the NICU before we could even understand what was happening.
Our daughter stayed in the NICU for 18 grueling days as doctors worked around the clock to figure out why she had those seizures. Piper had two MRI’s, an EEG, stomach ultrasound, and an echocardiogram. She was hooked up to a feeding tube, IV, and a breathing tube. We were in absolute pain as there was nothing we could do to help. After a lot of testing, the doctors eventually found that Piper had a left sided stroke sometime in utero.
This broke me.
All I felt was guilt. More and more guilt. It took me a long time to deal with this guilt and it truly never goes away… The crazy part is, is that if we did not schedule to be induced that Sunday night, the doctors don’t know if Piper would be with us... God sure works in mysterious ways!
After 18 days, we were able to take Piper home and begin the journey of PT, OT, Infectious Disease, Ophthalmology, and Neurology appointments. Fast forward Piper is almost 2 and is doing amazing!! She has an outgoing personality, and for sure shows her personality! Piper has officially been diagnosed with spastic hemiplegia secondary to her stroke. She has slight weakness and tight muscle tone on her right side, but so far that’s it! If she has more issues down the road, we will work with it and help her the best we can! She is my biggest hero and she has overcome something I didn’t even know was possible.
Piper is our perfect, spunky little girl and we are so blessed!
The Harms Family
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