"Helping families and communities prevent and cope with infant and young child loss, one baby step at a time"

Peyton is one of two honorary Angels John’s Charity’s is celebrating at the 6th John’s Baby Step Memory Run/Walk.  Here is her story…

 

Our story is somewhat of a long one due to all the medical lingo, and I myself being a Neonatal intensive care (NICU) nurse will try to keep it easy to understand. 🙂 when we found out we were pregnant we were overjoyed, we could not wait to grow our family! We already had a 6 year old (at the time) and we had her when we were kind of young, but now we were settled into our adult lives and we were “ready” to add to our family.

 

Our first child, Aubrey was born at 25 weeks gestation and it was quite the journey to get to where she is today, but if you look at her you would never know she started out any different than anyone else! But that also posed greater risk for this pregnancy. Although I was seen by the high risk OB docs and careful monitoring was happening I was put on bedrest at 17 weeks, and 11 long weeks later we got to meet our little girl.  

 

Peyton Rae Wright came into this world on July 5th 2014 she was born at 28 weeks gestation via section weighing 2lbs 10 oz. 15.5 inches long. She had a couple breathing issues due to her prematurity but after a couple days she was off the ventilator things seemed to be on track for her. Peyton and I were finally able to have our first snuggle time on her 3rd day of life. She was held and loved on every day for the next couple days and then that’s when we got the call, they told us Peyton had suffered a bowel perforation/necrotizing enterocolitis. This is a problem that preemies can develop, and the infection associated with this problem are very serious for the baby and take a lot to overcome the problem. Peyton never gave up, she fought so hard to stay with us, but unfortunately it was like a slippery slope that we could never get to the top of. She got so sick and out infections where out of control, which compromised her lungs and landed her back on the ventilator which made it difficult for her to be held.

 

All we could do as parents were stand beside her and hold her hand and pray. It was heart wrenching. The nurse inside me (the NICU nurse) wanted to just fix her, and I could not, there was nothing I could do, nothing anyone could do. “Only time will tell”, they said. So we did our best to use our time with her wisely, I wanted to get to know her as well as I could because I didn’t know how much TIME she or God would give us.  She spent her first two months of life in the NICU at Mercy Medical Center in Des Moines. Then she was transferred to the NICU at the University of Iowa Hospital. She spent another 2 months there still fighting HARD for her life.

 

I was able to hold her only one time when we were in Iowa city, it was so bittersweet because of the fact that she was so sick and on the type of ventilator she had required I was unable to hold her for months! There was no better feeling in the world at that moment. I had always told her how proud of her I was and told her how strong she was, and I know she knew our love. 

 

A couple weeks later, on November 6th 2014 she decided that it was time and she flew away to heaven in the early hours of the morning. She lived for 4 months and 1 day. 

 

I carry away 2 huge things from this experience. First, when going through a tough time in your life how important it is to lean on everyone around you! People want to help, they want to embrace you and hold you up when you are not strong, so LET them. We have met SO many people a long this journey, all the Docs and nurses who took care of our family and other family’s who have went through the loss of a child.  This has also brought both sides of our family closer together and I believe that is all a gift that Peyton gave to us.   The other thing I have learned is how important TIME is, especially when you don’t know how short time with a person might be. Although Peyton’s time was short with us, given the circumstances we were so fortunate to have as much time as we did with her. I can not thank the medical team for their long hours they put in to give us that time with her and those are memories that are the only thing we have left of her.

 

THANK YOU.