Tips to set your kids up for school year success.
Melissa, Kyle and baby David
Our son David was born three months before his due date because I had a condition known as placenta previa. I went into pre-term labor and with every contraction, David’s heart rate dropped, creating a potentially deadly situation for him. After three days and two nights of this, he was born at 5:30 p.m. on January 28, weighing only 2 pounds, 11 ounces and measuring 15 ¼ inches long.
The scariest aspect of David’s early arrival was the fact that we were marching into the unknown, as David’s dad, Kyle, put it. We didn’t know if he would live or not, whether he would be healthy or have a lot of problems, how long he would have to be in the hospital or how we would cope in the meantime.
Kyle had to return to work and I had to focus on my recovery. We made the 90-minute commute to Children’s Wisconsin in Milwaukee every day. Kyle woke up at 5:30 a.m., drove 40 minutes to Fond du Lac where he worked from 6:30 a.m. to 3 p.m., and then (depending on whether I could get a ride to his office) we either drove straight to Milwaukee or he picked me up at home. We spent about three hours each evening with David.
As a mother, it was very difficult only being able to spend a few hours a day with my baby and not being able to bring him home. I cried every night for the first couple weeks at home.
Since David arrived early, his room wasn’t finished, so his stay in the NICU bought us some time (at least on the weekends) to get the majority of his room finished.
Those were very long days. Kyle was very stressed and running on fumes and I was battling post-pregnancy hormones along with a mild case of the baby blues. Most days I didn’t want to get out of bed, but what kept me going was knowing I had to pump milk for my little guy and wanting to see him.
We didn’t worry whether he was receiving adequate care because he was in the #1 NICU in the nation, and we saw that the doctors and nurses took their jobs very seriously and loved caring for those tiny patients of theirs. We took comfort in knowing he was in the hands of caring, compassionate experts who were there to save lives, and that’s what we appreciated the most.
We never imagined our little David would be featured in TIME magazine to illustrate the life-saving measures doctors and caregivers take to save these fragile babies.
For Mother’s Day, I organized a brunch at our home. My grandmother from California was visiting, so along with her I invited my mom, grandma, Kyle’s mom, sister, brother-in-law and their son. We don’t have any set plans yet for Father’s Day, but I have a few surprises up my sleeve.
What started with something no bigger than a grain of sand ended with two surgeries and 10 days in the hospital.
The Children’s Wisconsin Community Health Asthma Management Program (CHAMP) assesses the physical, social and environmental health of kids with asthma.
Children’s Wisconsin has been affiliated with the Medical College of Wisconsin since 2000.
The Children's Wisconsin Transport Team brings kids to its Milwaukee campus — by ambulance, helicopter or fixed-wing airplane — from referring hospitals across the United States. But it does so much more.
The Therapist Fellowship Program is one of our key initiatives in addressing the pediatric mental health crisis.
The third blog post in the Kids in the crossfire series talks about how violence causes physical and physiological changes, why it continues, and the resources and bravery it takes to overcome.
The 24th annual WKLH Miracle Marathon for Children’s Wisconsin presented by Accunet Mortgage takes place May 19-20, 2022.