MARCH FOR BABIES: A MOTHER OF A MOVEMENT™
Charlottesville
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Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital
1015 Massie Road , Charlottesville, VA 22903
Date: Saturday, May 06, 2017 9:00 AM
1015 Massie Road , Charlottesville, VA 22903
Date: Saturday, May 06, 2017 9:00 AM
Our ambassador
Meet The Rzeszut Family
Meet The Rzeszut Family
Friday, March 17, 2006 started out like a normal day.
Raya was 32 weeks, 5 days into what had been a normal
pregnancy. For the past few months, Raya could feel Sophie
moving multiple times per day, every day. On March 17, fetal
movement wasn’t happening. We called the emergency
delivery room several times. Knowing that we were first time
parents, they didn’t take us too seriously, but eventually
agreed that we should come in. At first, the nurses were able
to get a strong fetal heartbeat, which was a great relief. They
tried to provoke fetal movement, but were unsuccessful.
Over the next couple of hours, the attitude in the exam room shifted from “I think we’ll let you go home
soon,” to “We might keep you overnight for observation,” to “Maybe we’ll induce you tonight.” Sophie’s
heart-rate was fluctuating, and the doctor grew more concerned . Finally, she said: “I don’t know
what’s going on, but we can do more for this baby outside the womb that we can inside. If it were my
child, I’d want her delivered tonight.”
The next 30-40 minutes passed in a blur, and Sophie was delivered at 11:03 PM. “ Possible partial placental abruption,” the doctor called out as they pulled Sophie from Raya’s womb. The room was quiet and tense, without the typical cry of a newborn baby. They rushed Sophie off to a side room;later, we’d see on the paperwork that her initial APGAR scores were quite low, and she didn’t take a breath on her own for the first 5 minutes.
Eric accompanied the nurses and Sophie through the hospital down to the NICU, an oxygen mask larger than Sophie’s head resting next to her, pointing oxygen in her direction. In the NICU, they finally put tiny Sophie on a scale: 4 pounds, 4 ounces. Not a typical newborn weight, but Sophie certainly wasn’t the smallest baby in the NICU.
Sophie stayed in the NICU for 22 days , and we quickly learned terminology and practices about which we knew nothing: bradycardias, surfactant, bilirubin, kangaroo care. As NICU parents can tell
you, having a child in the NICU feels like she’s not “yours” -- we had to ask permission for everything --
to hold her, to feed her, to touch her or change her diaper.
Yet, we’re so very lucky. Sophie is now a healthy and happy 10-year-old, our days of worrying about “failure to thrive” and numbers like 3% on her growth chart are over. Sophie has no long-term
effects from her preterm birth, and we are eternally grateful.
Lab work couldn’t confirm a placental abruption, or find any other cause for Sophie’s lack of movement and decrease in heart-rate that led to her premature birth. We may never know what went wrong,
and this is true for about half of all preemie births. The March of Dimes funds critical research into the causes of prematurity with the goal of lowering this number.
Thank you for joining us in the life-saving efforts of the March of Dimes.
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