Raylin's NICU Journey

Hi everyone! I am sure many of you have already heard or seen our story.  After the longest and most terrifying week of our lives, watching our baby struggle through NICU at Stormont Vail in Topeka, we are now home with our beautiful and perfect baby girl.  But the bills are coming in, and although nothing is finalized we are looking at a ballpark figure of $35,000 for the NICU stay alone.  This does not include Raylin's emergency transfer from Manhattan to Topeka, or my emergency C-Section and stay at Via Christi.  We also aren't calculating in our normal budgeted expenses; which have also been thrown off immensely since Dustin will have been home from work for two weeks without pay. Along with all of the gas/food money spent on trips back and forth over the last week to and from Topeka.

We absolutely do not expect to get $35,000+ handed to us.  It pains us both, but especially my husband, to even ask for anything at all.  I have our amount set immensely lower than the amount we need because we only want a decent head start on all of this.  We believe the financial  burden is our cross to bear, not our neighbors.  Just know that absolutely any amount helps us at this point. No amount is too small and nothing will go unappreciated.
For those who haven't heard what happened to myself and Raylin, here is a repost put as shortly as I could put it of our birthing story.

April 21, 2017 I woke up to my water being broke. Excited we rushed to the hospital and called my mom and family. But I knew something wasn't quite right, I was losing a lot of blood along with my water. The nurses called in my doctor immediately and he determined my placenta was partially abrupted. They decided to monitor little Raylin hard and let me continue into labor. I went through about 8 hours. All of a sudden my mom looks up at the monitor and says "her heart rate is dropping...." I watched in horror as her heart beat kept dropping lower and lower and not returning back up. Nurses came running in. I was only dilated to a 4 at the time. More and more nurses were coming in, alarms were going off, my doctor came in to examine and found a steady stream of thick blood coming out. He looked up at me and said "We are going to do a C-Section. Right now. We have to get that baby out." Before I knew it I was getting stuck with more needles and transferred to an operating room. My mom and Dusty were all suited up. I was trembling and bawling and practically suffocating from anxiety. What only seemed like five minutes later I heard everyone in the room saying "baby is here!!" But then...no excitement. Poker faces all around. I couldn't hear her crying. And they weren't bringing me her. I looked over my shoulder for one brief moment and saw my baby reaching toward me and looking right at me. She was so beautiful. We locked eyes before they put her down. I kept reaching for her. I kept asking Dustin why they weren't letting me hold her. I kept asking why she wasn't crying. I saw my mom's face full of joy and pulling her camera out, then her face suddenly sank. I saw her hide her eyes and turn away from my line of vision. Nobody would tell me why she wasn't crying. I kept seeing the nurses spanking her and still no crying.. Dustin just kept saying "Honey they have to clean her up first...shes fine..shes fine..." But all I could see was more and more nurses filing in, and pumps of blood coming from my perfect girl. But all I could think about was the fact that I hadn't got to hold her yet... I just kept reaching for her crying and trembling. Nobody told me at the time we had lost her. The nurses at Via Christi brought her back. Because of my placenta abrupting she had swallowed tons and tons of my fluid. Her lungs were completely full of my thick clotted blood. She couldnt breathe at all. All they told my crying trembling self was that they were flying her to Topeka for better care, which they were. I couldn't handle it. How could my baby who was just in my belly for nine months be getting taken so far away from me without me even getting to hold her. The rest of the night was a blur of bawling and trembling. They brought her in my room briefly in an incubator before they took her off. I got to feel her little toes curl around my finger, but I didn't even get to see her face. My heart breaks remembering them rolling her away from me in a giant glass case.


This picture was taken right before they took her away from me, after waiting hours to just see her and then only getting to see her little toes for a small few minutes.

Our first family picture and a beautiful testimony to the truest and deepest marital love God has ever granted anyone, and the most beautiful of all his miracles; Raylin René, our little survivor.