Gemma Jackson

As many of you know, when I was 14 weeks pregnant, we found out that Gemma would be born with gastroschisis (a birth defect that causes the intestines, and sometimes other organs, to protrude from a hole in the abdominal wall). Because of this, Mia and I had to leave St. Croix when I was 28 weeks to stay with family up in Wisconsin so I could be seen by a specialist at children’s hospital in Milwaukee twice a week.
Unfortunately, just a week after Shaba arrived, we went to one of my routine ultrasounds and found that Gemma wasn’t moving as much. Gemma was born by emergency csection 24 hours later weighing only 3 lbs 12 oz. Because she was a preemie and so little, she had a silo placed so the swelling in her intestines could go down and well as her being able to grow so they would fit back in her abdomen without squishing her lungs.  About three weeks later, a part of her dead bowel (which the surgeons were hoping would heal itself) perforated and Gemma was rushed into emergency surgery to remove it. Instead of sewing the two ends back together, they clamped them both and put her back in a silo to let them heal before attaching them so they didn’t risk losing more.


Once she had recovered from surgery, they slowly started reducing her intestines back into her abdomen by tying strings onto the silo and coaxing them in very slowly day by day. Eventually, they were able to completely flatten them in and put a temporary patch on her stomach to hold them. After 8 weeks, they will remove the patch and *hopefully* see that everything is healed enough to sew the two ends back together as well as look at all her intestines and remove any atresia’s (stoppages)  or other dead pieces of bowel. 

From talking to surgeons and doctors before her arrival, we thought we were prepared for what was to come. But truth be told, you can never prepare yourself for the mental and emotional toll it takes to have a child in the hospital and dependent on doctors and nurses for their life. We had hoped this would be an easy fix for Gemma and that she would be in the hospital for 6-8 weeks, that’s the average stay the surgeon told us for these cases. However, that’s not the case for Gemma, and with a month and a half already under our belt, we were told we’d be looking at another 3-4 months before we could talk about taking her home, not to mention her follow up visits after she’s discharged.  And now with Shaba having to fly back to work so we have money to even pay our daily bills, it’s been even harder. Having our family together is what made this *not even close to normal* situation feel somewhat okay and a little normal. We’d like to avoid him having to fly back again and just focus on getting through all of this as a family.