By: Kim Peavley-Milhoan
On July 2nd my life was forever changed. I had been put on bedrest at OSU only 2 days prior and was not expecting the day to end the way it did. At 1:00 p.m. the doctor discovered my 24 week old baby had somehow managed to put his foot through my cervix. I was then swept away to urgent surgery, all alone, to bring my baby into this world. As my husband took the hour and half drive to get to me I gave birth to our 1lb 12oz baby boy. It was late that night when we were finally able to see him. We walked in, knowing he would be small but we were not at all prepared to see our baby in an incubator, red, frail to the touch and tiny enough to fit in our hand. This was the moment when our NICU journey began. The days following were spent going back and forth from my hospital room down to the NICU to see him. When I was discharged, we had to make the 3 hour drive every day to visit our baby in the hospital. We learned about the Ronald McDonald House and began staying there 3 days later. It was a god send!
My husband had to return to work, and become a single dad to our other 3 children at home, as I shuttled back and forth every day to be with Parker. After 2 weeks Parker got a blood infection MSSA which he received through his PIC line. We were then transferred to Children’s to finish out the remainder of our stay and it ended up being much better for us because I was able to go back in forth to see him more often and for longer periods of time. On the weekends my family would travel to stay with me at Ronald McDonald and gave me some normalcy in my new life. The kids (pictured here meeting their brother for the first time) enjoyed having a playground, splash park and movie room there while I just enjoyed time with my other babies who I missed horribly. As the weeks came and went, Parker grew and became stronger. We made family friends with our nurses and doctors, and the familiar faces at the Ronald McDonald house. Today, here we are 20 weeks into this journey and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel. Parker now weighs in at 9lbs 9oz and is acting like a normal infant at 4 weeks corrected. We are excited to take him home soon so that our family can all be together again under one roof. This has definitely been an experience we will never soon forget but that has blessed us in more ways than we could have imagined.