Merrimack’s Miracle Baby
Published: September 4, 2003
Doctors told Lisa Grigg her second pregnancy would end in miscarriage, but nobody told Jaice, who just celebrated his first birthday.
It was not the deliriously happy drive home from the hospital with a newborn baby in the car that Lisa Grigg had fantasized about.
Not even close.
On June 6, 2002, hours after her water broke while at work, Grigg, 39, a single mom, was attempting to drive herself home to Merrimack where she would have to tell the sad news to her then 5-year-old son, Casey, that he was not going to be a big brother after all.
Grigg, who had conceived through artificial insemination in March, was 16 weeks pregnant when her membranes ruptured unexpectedly on that horrible day in June. She was nowhere near the 24-week minimum stage of pregnancy at which a fetus is considered “viable” able to survive outside the womb.
During an ultrasound, Grigg recalled that she soaked the paper on the exam table as she leaked more and more of the clear and precious amniotic fluid.
Within minutes, her doctor gave this gut-wrenching diagnosis: Grigg was about to deliver a baby that was far too premature to survive, even in the world of 21st century medicine. The doctor said the only thing left for her to do was get dressed, go home, and get ready to miscarry the baby.
Last Aug. 14, tears rolled down Grigg’s cheeks as she watched her little miracle boy, Jaice, grab a fistful of frosting on his first birthday cake.
Grigg cried as she thought about those parents “who are living the nightmare of prematurity” today. She also cried when she thought of all the doctors, nurses, baby-sitters, family members and friends whom she could never thank enough for supplying the skills and support that allowed her and Jaice to win his mighty struggle to survive.
But most of all, Grigg wept because she remembers that awful ride home from the hospital a year earlier.
Like it was yesterday.
“I didn’t shed a tear while talking with the doctors and going over how I was going to lose the baby in a day or two,” she said. “I remember feeling numb, like I was outside myself, while on the table. But during the drive home I cried and cried.”
Grigg drove herself around for hours as she fought to compose herself. Her mother, her brother and his family (who were visiting from Virginia) and her son, Casey, were waiting for her at home.
When she finally got home, Casey was playing outside. Grigg tried several times through sobs to tell her mother and brother what the doctor had said.
“I was to sit at home and wait to lose my child,” Grigg recalls telling them. “What kind of thing was that for someone to do? It was awful, and all I could do was lay in my bed and cry. I did manage (through many tears) to call my friends and my work to tell them what had happened.”
But even though Grigg continued to leak fluid that evening, it slowly felt as though it was stopping. Then it did stop.
The doctors warned that the odds were very long against her. But within days, Grigg returned to the hospital with a tiny heart still beating inside her. A new ultrasound showed that she had regained some fluid
The doctors said there was still plenty of danger: The lungs might not develop fully, or the child could have limb problems.
The doctor placed confined her to bed rest. Grigg’s employer and co-workers at a biotech firm in Manchester helped to support her, she said.
A week later, another ultrasound showed Grigg’s birthing fluid had returned to a normal level. She asked the technician about the sex of her fetus. The image showed that Casey was going to have a baby brother.
Casey was very excited.
“He told me before that he wanted a brother,” Grigg said.
“Two days after my water broke in June, I told him about the possibility that this baby may not survive. I explained it to him as, ‘The baby’s pool broke.’ He understood that the baby needed the pool water inside mommy to breathe, and that mommy was going to have to stay on bed rest so that this pool did not break again,” she said.
But it did break again, despite the bed rest. Too soon.
On the morning of what was supposed to be her six-month prenatal checkup, Grigg awoke to find her membranes had ruptured for a second time. The neo-natal intensive care unit at Southern New Hampshire Medical Center in Nashua could only handle fetuses who were in at least their 28th week, so Grigg was told to check into Dartmouth Hitchcock Clinic in Lebanon.
With help of medical experts and cutting-edge technology at the clinic, Grigg managed to keep the baby in her womb for 10 days, before signs of sudden bleeding forced her to undergo an emergency C-section that brought Jaice Grigg into the world.
Dr. Karen George delivered Jaice in Dartmouth Hitchcock’s birthing unit at 10:45 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2002. The baby weighed one-pound, 15-ounces and was 13 inches long. George held him over the curtain to give Grigg a look.
“I saw he was all purple, and he was trying so hard to wail,” said Grigg, who said she doesn’t recall much about her first meeting with her new son after she came out of surgery, “except that he was so very small and I was very frightened of his appearance. He looked so frail, so tiny. His nervous system was so undeveloped that he constantly looked as though he were being zapped by electricity.”
It was only after her next visit with her newborn son, hours later, that Grigg realized just how strangely Jaice looked. He had tiny hairs all over him (lanugo). His ears were folded over because they still lacked cartilage. His eyes were not fused shut, as many preemies born that early were, and his skin was not as transparent as expected of someone so young.
“You could wrap your finger around his ankle,” his mom recalled. “He had a pretty good amount of hair, but lacked eyelashes and eyebrows.”
From the moment of birth, Jaice took a ride on what the birthing professionals call “the NICU roller coaster.” His bodily health seemed to rise and fall almost by the hour, as he encountered and overcame various major or minor physical difficulties, one after another.
Dr. William H. Edwards, neonatology division chief of Children’s Hospital at Dartmouth Hitchcock, remembers Jaice well.
Edwards said that when Jaice was a day old, he began to develop persistent pulmonary hypertension, in which the circulation to the lungs fails to open up after birth. It’s a complication seen most often in later- or full-term babies.
The usual treatment is nitric oxide gas acting directly on blood vessels in the lungs, which causes them to relax. But there was little experience with the treatment on smaller and premature infants.
A decision was made to go ahead with the treatment.
“We started Jaice on (nitric oxide) close to midnight,” Edwards said. “We were amazed by the dramatic response he had to the treatment.”
That day, Aug. 12, was Edwards’ birthday, and Jaice’s rally “made for one of my best birthdays ever,” he said.
There were to be further health scares and complications throughout Jaice’s stay at both Dartmouth Hitchcock and later at the NICU in Nashua, none of which had lasting negative effect. He lived 71 days of his life in a hospital, but Jaice finally was strong and healthy enough to go home.
“What I will always remember about Jaice’s mom was her absolute confidence and faith that Jaice would do well,” said Marilyn Hulslander, one of several nurses at the Nashua NICU who cared for Jaice. “Every time an obstacle presented itself, she refused to believe that Jaice would not overcome it. In the face of overwhelming odds, she always believed he would be fine.”
Hulslander added that she believes “the strength of spirit” demonstrated by Jaice’s mom may have been the most important factor in his recovery.
Last month, Jaice had begun crawling and pulling himself up to stand. As he reaches each milestone, his mother’s fears of severe disabilities fade. Today, Grigg says her son’s only lingering health problem is R.O.P. (retinopathy of prematurity, also called “lazy eye”). Jaice must wear a patch over his good eye for up to six hours a day. He also wears glasses.
But he needs only one eye to keep track of his idol, older brother Christopher. Jaice’s face lights up when Christopher enters a room.
As Mommy Grigg looks again at her little miracle, the beautiful 1-year-old boy who she was told once upon a terrible car ride 14 months ago would be lost to her forever, her eyes tear. She thanks God for her son’s life daily. And she cannot find enough words to thank Jaice’s many amazing caretakers and family members enough.
“I was once told by a Lebanon opthalmologist that if that one eye problem was all that was wrong with my 25-weeker, I should count my blessings,” she said. “And I am … I am.”
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