Little Miss Vivian was too impatient to wait for her due date to enter the world. At a mere 23 weeks and 6 days, Vivian made her debut on November 20th at 12:10pm.
Mel and Christian currently do not have anything for Vivian. They were in the middle of a house renovation in order to add an additional bedroom in their home to have a nursery for Vivian prior to purchasing a bunch of stuff so that they would have somewhere to put it .
Because of the Vivian coming early, as well as an additional surgery prior to her birth that Mel had to have, Mel had to stop working much sooner than they had planned. Her additional income was going to go for purchases for the baby. She will also be staying in Minnesota for the following months in order to be there with Vivian until she is able to join her family at home.
Any help is greatly appreciated. Mel and Christian are facing a long and difficult journey. They need support for costs that are going to add up fast. Some of these costs include: gas for traveling back and forth to Minnesota, parking garage fees, food for essentially 2 separate households, normal household bills that will be difficult to cover during any unpaid fmla time, any medical costs that are not covered and/or exceed insurance coverage and more.
Should you want to help but would prefer to buy them a gift they had made a baby registry and had planned to have a baby shower but Vivian came before they could have it. They are registered on amazon. Here is the link to the registry:
Here is a recap of the events that occurred leading up to Vivian's early birth (told by Mel):
On October 24th I had my 20 week ultrasound. Not only did we find out that we were having a baby girl, but we also found out that I had a cyst on my left ovary which was 13 cm long. Because of Vivian’s position, they were not able to see her spinal wall or the placenta position. They were also unable to determine the type of the cyst (simple or complex) or if it was fluid filled. Because of this, they scheduled a follow up ultrasound for November 28th.
On Monday, November 13th, I was unable to keep anything down. I vomited 10 times throughout the course of the day. I also had a dull consistent pain on my left side. I assumed I had the flu or some kind of stomach virus. I took it easy and laid low Tuesday-Wednesday. On Thursday, I decided to try and push through and go to work, however I vomited throughout the day (7 times that day).
Friday morning (November 17th) was more of the same. I vomited several times in a short period of time. At this point, I decided to go to the urgent care at Marshfield Clinic in Eau Claire. They discovered that I was severely dehydrated so they started me on IV fluids. An ultrasound uncovered that the cyst had grown to 20 cm and was complex in type. They decided that the cyst needed to be removed within the next couple of days. In order to do the surgery they needed to have 3 teams in place: gynecology oncology, OB and NICU. Unfortunately, Marshfield clinic would not have those teams all available for 10 days and the surgery needed to happen before that so they began to look at other location options. U of M in Minneapolis responded and was able to admit me right away.
I arrived early on Saturday morning at the U of M and received more fluids while they reviewed my chart and were determining if they would need additional scans. At about 10am an OR was available and all departments were on hand so I was taken in for surgery. They originally went in laparoscopically but quickly determined that the cyst was larger than the scans showed and had to do a lateral abdominal incision to remove the mass in it’s entirety. The surgery was successful however, they were unable to determine if it was cancerous in surgery, which meant that they were unable to stage it. Therefore, they needed to remove my left fallopian tube, my left ovary and some fat from my intestinal wall to send to pathology for further testing.
Sunday morning I began to have contractions 3 minutes apart. I was still a little dehydrated, so they gave me fluids to hydrate me, as well as stop the contractions. I continued to have some contractions throughout the day and they varied in intensity, length, as well as the amount of time in between them.
Sunday night I became nauseous and started to vomit again and my abdomen was largely distended. The nurse noticed a fluid sound when I would cough as well as a diminished sound in my left lung. They were worried that I had developed pneumonia from the surgery. They sent me to do a chest xray and were able to rule out pneumonia. Because I had been having so many contractions, they decided to do a pelvic exam and discovered that I was 1 cm dilated but said that could be because I have had a child in the past.
A few hours later they rechecked me and I was dilated to 2 cm. They gave me a steroid to help Vivian’s lungs develop in case she was born early. They also gave me magnesium to help protect her brain. The magnesium can also help calm down the uterus and slow down or stop contractions.
They determined that I had something called illeus, which is when the bowels stop working. It can happen after having surgery. That was what they believed was causing me to be nauseous and vomit. They placed an NG tube in my nose to help keep my stomach as empty as possible.
They did an ultrasound and saw that Vivian was in a breech position. If things continued to progress, they would need to do a c-section. Another pelvic exam showed that I was now dilated to 3 cm. They said if I were to get to 4 cm they would deliver Vivian. Micro preemies can be born when you are only dilated to 6 cm and because of her being breech as well as wanting to ensure that she was born in a controlled situation where they could give her the best possible chance, they did not want me to dilate much beyond 4 cm. The nicu came in to discuss what to expect should Vivian be born in the next 24-48 hours. They had given me 3 different medications to try to slow down or stop the preterm labor.
On the morning of Monday, November 20th, after the shift change, the doctor checked me and I was now dilated to 4 cm. At that point, we had to decide if Vivian should be born then or wait a couple more hours and recheck my cervix. We were told that It can be tricky when multiple doctors are checking your cervix because they can have different interpretations of where you are at. We opted to wait and recheck things in 2 hours, as we wanted to keep Vivian in as long as possible. Ideally, she would be able to stay in long enough for me to get the next dose of steroids for her lungs, but that would not be until 8pm Monday night. The doctors were concerned with how I was progressing and felt that all signs pointed to Vivian being born that day.
The next check revealed that I was now at 5 cm dilated so they immediately began preparations for the c-section. Vivian was born at 12:10pm and weighed 1 pound 5.5 ounces and was 28.2 cm long. They were able to use the same incision from the mass removal surgery but did need to elongate the incision some.
Vivian has a lot of tubes and monitors right now for various things. The main things for them to watch for right now is her brain for brain bleeds, brain development, overall lung development, body temperature, weight gain and more. Vivian’s red blood cells were a little low so they did a blood transfusion. This is common for a micro preemie of this size and they said we should anticipate her to need more of those in the following days.
We are currently not able to hold Vivian for at least 3 days. The doctors have also said we should expect Vivian to be in the hospital until her due date (March 12th) and likely after that.
Organizer and beneficiary
Melody Blaisdell
Beneficiary