Baby Jayden Walker's Emergency Fund

After 9 remarkable months of pregnancy, Jayden Thomas Walker had a rough entrance into our world. After inducing labor and pushing Pitocin through me without any progress for more than 24 hours, Jayden’s heartrate started to dip very low and I had to be rushed in for emergency C-section to deliver him immediately Sunday evening December 4, 2016.

Because of this stressful situation, Jayden’s lungs filled with Meconium. This is known as Meconium Aspiration Syndrome (MAS). There are many levels of seriousness with MAS, Jayden’s made him a very sick baby. Jayden’s condition was critical and he was transported via Bayflight (helicopter) immediately to All Children’s Hospital. Decisions had to be made immediately as Jayden’s health was declining very fast. The doctors decided that the best thing for Jayden was to start him on ecmo (Extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) which is a type of life support mainly used for young children to give their hearts and lungs time to recover and heal after being put under a great deal of stress like Jayden’s had been. This was done early Monday morning.

By the time I was released from the hospital from my C-section on Tuesday afternoon, Jayden had already been on ecmo almost 2 days. I was not well enough to travel and see him until Wednesday. Paul and I saw our little boy for the first time on Wednesday. It took everything within us to hold ourselves together while seeing Jayden, such a new precious life hooked up to all those machines. There was barely a spot to even touch him. Over the next few days Jayden progressed every day with them slowly having his body take over the work that ecmo had been solely doing days before. Thursday was the best day for us. We came in and Jayden had his eyes open and his arms were moving around. He was waking and sleeping on his own, gazing at us while we read him stories, yawning and everything a normal baby would do. I know it doesn’t seem like much but it was the closest we had come to moving our way out of CVICU and off ecmo.

Then it happened. I had just gone upstairs to pump breast milk for Jayden to have available and I received a call from Paul. I knew this couldn’t be good. He said that I needed to come back right away that something had gone wrong. I rushed back so fast and the whole floor was lit with blue lights. They had called a code blue and Jayden had about 25 people in and around his room waiting for their name to be called to assist in what was needed. Jayden’s cannulas had come out of his neck and he was bleeding profusely. This set his body into shock and they did emergency surgery right there to re-insert the cannulas as quickly as possible. And that is when the reality hit us. All the progress that Jayden worked so hard to make was gone. Now we were back at square one and had to wait for him to progress to where we were at all over again. And to make matters worse it was not fault of his own. Had this not happened then he may be off ecmo today and moved into the NICU. But that is not what happened or where we are at. All we can do once again is pray that our son show progress in leaps and bounds so he can come home with us soon.

Now it is Wednesday and Jayden is still sedated to allow his body to heal at a faster rate. Without the sedation, he wants to move around too much. Sounds like a good thing and it would be if he didn’t need more time to heal. They have warmed him back to his normal temperature once again and they are talking about reducing the sedation and paralytic as well so he can start moving around more on his own again. They did a broncioscope Monday and are doing another one today to remove more gunk from his lungs and help clear the airway for him to breath own his own as they bring his levels up to match the ecmo levels that are working for him right now. All of these things together will help bring him closer to coming home.

This has been such a tragic time in our life for Paul, me and my oldest son Jordan who is 12 years old (Paul and I are his sole providers at this time).  My last month of pregnancy was particularly difficult causing me to work a lot less than I planned to. On top of that Paul has taken off over a month of work with no pay and we expect him to have to take off several more weeks over the next few months. We did our best to make sure that things would be taken care of once Jayden was born. Unfortunately, we did not plan or foresee that this would happen to our beautiful baby boy.

Our focus right now is being there for both Jayden and Jordan. Trying to keep things as normal as possible for Jordan and be at Jayden’s bedside each day letting him know that we are there for him. This is very hard to do with only one car and having to drive 40 miles each way between New Port Richey and St. Pete.

Paul has already taken 2 weeks’ unpaid leave from work. His work would willingly give him whatever time off he needs during this critical stage of Jayden’s recovery. However, he is our family’s main provider and without a check coming in from him we will not be able to support our family. We are already behind on rent and several monthly bills just since Jayden’s birth. Christmas is a whole other issue. Obviously, all Paul and I want is for Jayden to come home for Christmas. But we also have a 12-year-old to think about and it is much harder for him to understand the full situation that we are facing.

Since being pregnant I have reduced my hours of work out of the home with the result being that I work about 1 day a week outside of our home for my clients.  Having 1 car (a 2003 Ford Mustang) also makes it hard for us to get Jordan to school, Paul and I to the hospital and Paul to work (once he returns to work).  We were hoping to be able to get a new car before Jayden’s birth (especially one that would fit our family). We can’t even fit a person in the front seat of the car with Jayden’s car seat in the back and secured properly.

Our financial obligations right now are greater than us and we would appreciate with utmost gratitude any help that you could give to our family in this critical time of need. We have gone back and forth with the idea of reaching out to our loved ones, friends and family for help and knowing that we would be more than willing ourselves to help any way we could to allow a family as much time together as possible during such a critical stage in life, we decided to request your help during our time of need through GoFundMe. Any extra time that we can spend with Jayden as a family is beneficial to his recovery and recommended by the doctors and staff at All Children’s Hospital. We just want to be able to give Jayden the best outcome possible and to be there to see him through it all.

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