For little girl, every birthday is a miracle
Published: May 23, 2006
Last week’s column about overindulgent birthday parties had its detractors, a couple of whom called to tell me so.
No mea culpa here; I still think we overindulge our kids. But I also met a little girl last week whose every birthday is a milestone because she wasn’t entitled to any of them.
Three-year-old Gabrielle Rose Caione was born at 23 weeks and six days’ gestation on Mother’s Day 2003. She weighed only 1 1/2 pounds and was 12 1/2 inches long.
Today, she is what doctors call “globally delayed.” She has cerebral palsy. She can’t see out of her right eye and only slightly out of the left. She has full strength in only one arm. She barely speaks above a whisper because of the imposing tubes that went in and out of her mouth in her first nine months of life. She only recently learned to take steps with a walker.
Oh, and she’s a firecracker. For breakfast, it’s pumpkin soup or nothing. She’ll take canned ravioli over her Italian grandmother’s homemade stuffed shells anytime. She avoids using her weak right arm, except to fiddle with her hair. She’ll only watch TV if it’s Baby Einstein. Because her hearing is impeccable, she’s a light sleeper.
“Flush the toilet,” says her mother, Christine Caione, with a roll of the eyes, “and she’s up.”
Gabby’s tireless mother rolls her eyes a lot.
“She can’t always talk, but she’s very smart,” says Christine, a single mother who lives with her parents in Palmyra. “She knows what she wants.
“She was a little fighter, and she still is.”
The March of Dimes estimates 1 in 8 births in the United States is premature. When Christine dilated to 3 centimeters at 22 weeks, doctors told her she could either abort or remain in bed for the rest of her pregnancy. They also told her if she went into labor, she would need the services of a funeral home.
Eleven days later, Gabby came.
When she let out a cry, her mother knew she had a survivor on her hands.
“She kicked me in the butt on the way out,” Christine marvels.
Gabby spent three months on a ventilator and had 16 surgeries her first year. Not once did her mother question whether or not she should be kept alive. Or that she would survive and thrive.
“We’ve just been fighting and fighting,” the 35-year-old says. “Could I imagine what we went through? No. Can I believe it was me? No.”
Says Christine’s mother, Lucille Miller, “She went to the hospital every single day. She never asked, “Why me?’ She knows what she has to do and she does it.”
“It’s been a long three years,” says Christine, who remembers once watching a friend’s child eat an apple and wondering, “Will my daughter ever be able to do that?”
Last Thursday at Bellmawr’s Larc School, Gabby ate a Fig Newton.
Later that day, Christine picked up Gabby from her padded crib and sang her way into the kitchen: “If you’re happy and you know it, clap your hands,” Gabby bounced happily on her mother’s left hip.
On the wall nearby was a drawing of balloons that said, “Happy Birthday, Gabby!” In the living room, the TV console was swarming with birthday cards.
Two weeks ago, there was a third birthday party for Gabby at Nellie Bly’s Ice Cream Parlor in Riverton.
Was it indulgent? Maybe.
It was, after all, the third anniversary of a miracle.
If you enjoyed this good news Subscribe to Good News Blog
Share this
To share this simply copy and paste one of the below URL's: