Abby
Abby's Story I found out I was pregnant in June, 1996, a complete SURPRISE! I hadn't planned on having any kids so soon, and I had wanted to finish college and be somewhat prepared. However, I found out life doesn't wait until your ready to give you things.
My pregnancy was pretty uneventful for the first 5 months. It wasn't until I went for my routine sonogram at 20 weeks that I found out something was wrong. The ultrasound tech said that it looked like something was wrong with the baby's bowels and she needed to have the doctor come in and check it out. The doctor came in and scanned my belly, discussed it with the tech, and came to his conclusion...my my baby, a girl, had a tumor known as a sacrococcygeal teratoma located at the base of her spine. We spoke to the genetic counselor that day, Geoff, my dad, and my sister in law Tiffany thankfully had came with me for the sonogram! She showed us some drawings of exactly what my baby had, gave us some statistics of 60/40% chance of surviving the pregnancy. The goal was to make it to 37 weeks, and then they would do a c-section, and my daughter would be sent to Children's Hospital to have the tumor removed. She also told us that we could have a selective abortion....this was out of the question. I was going to give my daughter every chance at life that she deserved.
from then on I was labeled as having a "high risk" pregnancy and I had to have a sonogram every two weeks when I went to the doctors. That lasted for about a month, and things seemed to be going pretty well, the tumor wasn't growing much, but I had started having a lot of back pain. I thought that it was just from standing around all day at work, but my mom thought that I might be having pre-tern labor so we went to the hospital. Well, it turned out that I was in labor, so I was put on Brethine and bed rest at home. My next doctors appointment was in two days, and it was then the he decided the best place for me to be was in the hospital on bed rest, that way I could be monitored everyday with non-stress tests and sonograms. The goal was to prolong the pregnancy as much as possible, but in case of an earlier than expected delivery, I was put on steroids to make the babies lungs stronger.
After being in the hospital exactly one month, my doctor decided it was time to deliver. He thought that it was too risky to keep her inside me any longer because she was going into congestive heart failure and he was afraid she was developing hydrops.
Since the hospital I had spent my last month at wasn't capable of handling a case as serious as my, I was transferred to another hospital in town that is what they call a "level 3". The doctors felt that a c-~section would be they safest way to bring my baby into the world. So on December 20 at 4:24 p.m. Abigail Madison Taylor Cordrey was brought into this world Even though she was 2 months premature, she weighed over nine pounds, of which about six were due to the tumor.
I don't remember much about the delivery because of the medication I was on since I had a c-section. The one thing I remember was Geoff singing the Lumberjack song in the delivery room and me making him sing Christmas songs.
" After she was born they wanted to get her stabilized before she was transferred to Children's. The transport team from Children's that took her was great! I was still in the recovery room and they brought her in so I could see her before she left. She was beautiful! Her hair was like mine, she had my nose, and definitely had her daddy's chin (somehow I always knew she would!) I wasn't sure how she would look with the tumor, so when I saw her I was surprised at how normal she looked! Ten fingers, ten toes, a perfect face...the only thing wrong with her was this tumor.
From then on we were just kind of playing things by ear, to see how she was doing. They knew that they needed to get the tumor removed as soon as possible, but they wanted to wait until she was stable.
On Saturday they decided the surgery should be done on Sunday morning.
Well, Sunday morning came and Abigail was doing really well. They had put her on a special machine called an ECMO, and her oxygen saturation was at a good level. We went to see her early in the morning because they planned to take her off to surgery around 8:30. I regret so much not taking any pictures of her that day, she looked so good...but then, I never expected to ever lose her. I can remember how she would drool and I got to wipe it off, and when I would do that she would try and suck on my finger.
I'll never forget how as we were saying what would be our goodbyes, Faith Hill's song "Can't Lose Me" came on the radio. (The NICU nurse's kept the radio next to Abigail because they said she liked the country music) It was like she was telling us that no matter what happened, she was just a "wish away".
Because I was just barely 2 days post c-section, I was too tired and too much in pain to stay there while they performed the surgery, so I went back to my room at University Hospital and tried to rest as much as possible. I can remember finally getting to sleep around 10:30, and being woken up by a horrible pain in my stomach unlike any pain I had previously. It was the strangest feeling, something that is hard to put into words. Then about 30 minutes later we got a call from the doctor saying that he needed to have a conference with us. I think at that point I knew deep down what had happened, but I was in such denial I didn't want to believe it. I thought that he was probably half way through the surgery and just wanted to update us on how it was going.
When I got to Children's Hospital, the doctor said that he wanted to speak to Geoff and I privately first, so we went into the pre-surgery room. We sat down where they had some chairs set up in sort of a semi-circle and the doctor started talking. He started off by talking briefly about the surgery and the tumor, and then said "the baby didn't make it"...That was the single most horrible moment of my life. I didn't know what to do...was he serious? should I cry? was this real? I felt so empty inside.
Tempus Sans ITC" After that they brought the rest of the family in and briefly went over the surgery with them. I am so thankful that almost all of my family and Geoff's family was there. It was so comforting to have them with us during this time.
What happened next is a scene that I remember exactly... beyond the doors to this room we were in I could see a group of nurse's walking towards us with one carrying a bundle of blankets. They were all crying, and I was just really wondering what they were doing. As they walked through the door I finally realized what it was they were carrying...my daughter. They gave here to me to hold...She looked so different, she didn't have all the tubes hooked up to her like she had before. She looked so peaceful. Geoff and I took turns holding her for the first hour and then the rest of the family came in and held her. The nurse took picture of us holding her, although only a couple came out not blurry, but we did get some professional pictures of her taken. They also got a lock of hair and hand and feet prints. The nurse said that I could help give her a bath and dress her, but I was so afraid to... I was so afraid of what she looked like under her little dress.
As I sit here writing this, I really can't believe this actually happened...Some days it feels like a dream and others it's so real that is almost unbearable. I can't believe it's been over 5 years now since she came into my life, but I do know that even though it has been the hardest thing that I will probably ever have to go through, I wouldn't take back a second of it.
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