Things to Do in Glendale With a Baby
Emily L. Mahoney
When little Lauren was born in Glendale in late April, the fanfare that usually accompanies new life was overshadowed by fear and worry. Balloons in the waiting room went undelivered and her brow went unkissed.
Lauren Ellen Szewc spent her start days in intensive care, having been born with well-nigh one-half her organs outside her body.
Her stomach, fallopian tubes, ovaries and large and pocket-size intestines spilled out of a cavity bigger than a quarter adjacent to her navel, forming a blanket of purple, swollen organs that draped over her when she was built-in.
The baby's maternal granddaddy, Jeff Perry, 44, talked about his stupor when he saw a pic of Lauren for the kickoff time.
"If y'all could encounter that, yous can handle anything," he said.
Lauren, born with a birth defect called gastroschisis, was ane of iii babies with the status to finish upward at Banner Thunderbird Medical Middle this summertime. They all received corrective surgery the aforementioned mean solar day.
Dr. Stuart Lacey, a pediatric surgeon at Banner Thunderbird, performed ii of the procedures. He said that considering of medical advances in the last decade, the defect is now treatable and only rarely results in death.
"Three babies undergoing an functioning for gastroschisis in one day is, I'm certain, very unlikely to have happened in this state in this yr in any hospital," Lacey said.
According to the U.S. Centers for Illness Control and Prevention, gastroschisis occurs in one in ii,229 babies — slightly more common than Spina bifida, past comparing. But Lacey said the frequency is increasing, possibly because of environmental factors. Other than via ultrasounds, the defect is incommunicable to predict, because it is non hereditary and is non related to chromosomes.
Lauren'due south mother, Kayla Perry, 24, recalled when, just 18 weeks into the pregnancy, the doctor phoned her with the diagnosis after a concerning ultrasound.
"It'southward a defect and you lot think, 'What did I do, that my daughter has to go through this?'" the Buckeye adult female said, fighting back tears.
Perry said one thing made the diagnosis even harder to bear: Google.
"You lot're going to see zip but the worst of the worst stories on the Internet," she said.
After weeks of worry and ultrasounds, doctors told Perry to prepare to have her baby in i week. Just afterwards Lacey saw the most recent ultrasound pictures, which showed Lauren's external organs had gotten more and more than inflamed, he made a assuming decision.
"I went to get have dinner with my mom and dad and during dinner I got a phone call," Perry remembered. "He said, 'Hey, we're having a babe tomorrow!'"
She arrived at the infirmary April 28 with the baby's father, Chris Szewc, 29, for a successful Caesarean section just over a calendar month earlier her due date.
Lauren'south birth marked the beginning of a long, emotional journey for her family, whose priority was to ensure her organs were secured so that she could be hooked up to the machines that would salve her life.
An initial surgery just hours afterward nativity put her fallopian tubes, ovaries and office of her tummy within her belly. While she awaited other surgeries, other organs were in a plastic silo, a clear tube that rested on Lauren's belly and allowed her organs to migrate back into her body slowly, with gravity.
"The hardest part was going past the Stork'due south Nest," Jeff Perry said of the area where healthy babies are kept. "Seeing people accept babies every day — not wishing anyone to go through this — to get dwelling house in 2 days, when we walked by that aforementioned thing 45 days directly, wondering when ours was going to come up out."
On Mother's Day, 12 days after Lauren'southward birth, Perry was finally allowed to hold her daughter for the kickoff time.
"Of course nosotros all lost it," she said. "At that place's that instant bond where I didn't want to put her downwards."
Through the ordeal, Perry constitute strength in other moms with "gastro babies," whom she connected with through online support groups, and subsequently, ii women who roomed downward the hall.
Ana Mejia of Phoenix and Brittany Melton of Glendale had gastro babies within days of Perry.
"We'd all make jokes like, 'Nosotros're the belly-button club, homemade belly buttons, designer belly buttons,'" Perry said. Gastroschisis leaves babies with a trademark scar, an "10" over their belly buttons where their abdomens were put back together.
And when Perry was finally allowed to return home with Lauren on June 10, she vowed that she would spread the word about her baby'south journey and so other moms could observe something other than horror in their initial Google searches.
"We're going to spread awareness and help other moms and say, 'You can get through this,'" Perry said.
Perry's family created a Facebook group for parents with gastro babies to answer questions and provide back up, called "Gastroschisis Piddling Warriors."
All three babies — Lauren Ellen Szewc, Aaliyah Rhodes and Thomas "Trey" Foley III — have made total recoveries and are expected to lead normal, healthy lives, Lacey said.
He said it was rewarding to run into all three babies go home because of his piece of work and the work of countless others.
"What is the swell joy for all of u.s.a. ... is seeing these babies and watching them abound upwardly," he said. "That'south what information technology's all about, is these people having their lives from something that was a devastating illness just a decade or two ago."
Source: https://www.azcentral.com/story/news/local/glendale/2015/08/04/arizona-babies-rare-defect-same-day/31083739/
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