Through the haze of the drugs that I was given throughout my labor, I realized the doctors were trying to tell me something. As reality started to set in, I began to realize something was wrong with my baby boy. My eyes were still closed, and as the room filled with silence, I realized I didn’t hear my baby cry. I thought I was going to open my eyes and things would be normal, I would face the regular life of a teen parent. Next, as I overcame my biggest fear by opening my eyes to find that my child wasn’t there, I figured he would be in the nursery with the rest of the babies only to find him in
University of Pennsylvania’s Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. Walking into a room seeing him attached to several machines filled my heart with pain. I quickly called for his doctor, to find out what was going on with my baby boy Maurice Davis. Tears filled my eyes as several doctors walked toward me; just by looking at them I just knew I was facing bad news. As they approached me, a lady cleared her throat and began explaining what was going on. They told me that he wasn’t breathing on his own, but that he would catch on, and that it happens to a lot of babies.
As the day went on they realized that he wasn’t catching on, and that it was getting worst, so they came to a conclusion to do an X-ray. A few other doctors came to explain to me what they found in the X-ray. As the women did earlier, she cleared her throat and began talking, and told me that Maurice had something called
pulmonary hypertension, which is high blood pressure in the blood vessels that connect the heart to the lungs, causing changes to the blood vessels that make it difficult for the heart to pump enough blood to the lungs. They also found a hole in his lungs, and weren’t sure how it out there.
I didn’t know what to think, all I could do was cry. I thought my baby boy was going die. Although I was scared to be a mother, but I realize how much my maturity level changed for the better, when I found out I was going to be a mother. All that was going on with Maurice caused me to lose weight, stress, and made me very depressed. Never did I think I would have had to wait a whole month and two days before I was able to hold my baby boy for the first time.
Within hours they had transferred him to
Children Hospital of Philadelphia’s NICU {Neonatal Intensive Care Unit}, within hours because they realized his breathing had gotten even bad. He was immediately put on life support, and made his home there for the next three months of his life. He was put on a machine called an
Ecmo, it acted in place of his lungs because his weren’t working properly. They placed two catheters in the side of his neck. One was to drain the blood out of his body into the machine, and the other one was to send the blood with the oxygen back into his body.
After about two weeks, I called
Upper Darby High School let them know what I was experiencing. After the first month of being at CHOP NICU, the school must have gotten the impression I wasn’t coming back, and I didn’t, so they dropped me from the roll. The reason for me not being back, was because when I finally got to bring my son home, the spot where they removed the catheters from the incision wasn’t healing properly, and kept getting infected. This went on for about a year, until the finally decided to do surgery on the incision.
Lastly, I would have never thought January 18th, 2008 would be a day that changed my life. But I didn’t know weather it was going to be for the better or worse. I was scared to be a mother, but being though I do a pretty amazing job at whatever I put effort into, I knew I would be a great mother. This day made me feel the changes in my life would be bad, due to the fact I was facing a mother’s biggest fear: seeing her child face death. But my boy pulled through this made me a proud parent, and I see that the changes was for the better.
I’m now currently a student at Y.E.S.,
{Youth Empowerment Services} Working on getting my GED, still sticking with the same plans I had made in the past for my future to be a Radiology Technician. I kind of switched up my plans as far as going away to college at
West Chester University to
Community College of Philadelphia, because I learned more about them and discover they have the best medical classes in the country, and I’ll be saving a lot more money. The experience that I’ve went through with Maurice motivated to stay focused on what it is I want, to do better for myself because it is my job to make sure he never wants for anything, or so he don’t go out and try to provide the things he need for himself in the wrong ways.
The first year of my son’s life was one of my biggest turning points because not only did I, Lacey Mitchell, learn from this but it made me stronger woman.
