Bradshaw, Alyssa Nicole

[left:870156ee15]http://www.cherubs-cdh.org/Album/new/bradshaw-alyssa0.jpg[/left:870156ee15]May 4, 2004 - Alyssa was diagnosed at 28 weeks gestation with a Left Congenital Diaphragmatic Hernia. I was drained of 2 liters of Amniotic fluid twice during the last 2 months of pregnancy due to Alyssa's incapability to fully swallow. For the last 3 weeks, I also suffered from the PUPPPS rash that occurs in 1% of first time pregnancies. It is an itchy hive-like rash in patches.

Monday, July 19, 2004 - Alyssa Nicole Bradshaw was born at 5:25pm at 39 weeks gestation. Tom and I got the phone call at 6am that we were hoping for!!! We were on our way to be induced at 6:30am!! We got to the hospital at 8am, where I got myself all checked in and into bed. For the first couple hours, Alyssa was just being monitored like a normal regular non stress test, which we had done many times before. At 10am they started me on Pitocin and kept the monitors on her. I started to feel more contractions and they were getting stronger. At 10:27am, Dr. Zuidema decided to break my water.

After Dr. Zuidema broke my water, I was dilated to a 3, still with 100% effacement but Alyssa was still at a -3 station. The nurse then checked me around 1pm, and I was at 4cm and -2 station. I then got my epidural and was so pleased!!! Tom went down stairs to go update Grandma and Grandpa Bradshaw to let them know I was 4cm and to be ready to come anytime. Tom came back up to the room after my epidural was inserted and I was then resting comfortably. The nurse told him he might want to go back down stairs and call Grandma and Grandpa back, because I was already dilated to a 7!! That was quite a shock to him! I was having terrible back labor due to Alyssa being sunny side up

Dr. Zuidema left the room for a few hours, and let Tom and I converse with Grandma and Grandpa Smith for awhile as the nurse came in and out to check on Alyssa and me! Dr. Zuidema came in at, I think it was around 3:30pm, and checked me again. I was dilated to 10cm, and Alyssa was at +3 station and ready to come out!!! The doctor also checked to make sure that she wasn't sunny side up any longer. She wasn't!! She had decided to cooperate! I started pushing at 4:10pm and Alyssa was out at 5:25pm! She was the prettiest thing we had ever seen! It was quite a miracle and only to add to that, during my last push, all of the sudden the TV turned on. No one could figure out how that happened because no one was by the remote. I was in the middle of the last push and the TV came on. It was The Lion King right at the beginning, where they sing the Circle of Life; how much more perfect could it have been!

Tom didn't get to cut the cord because they wanted to rush her off, but he could see over the Neonatologist’s head. He saw Alyssa open her eyes for the first time and she looked directly at him. They then swaddled her and lifted her up so I could see her. She looked right at me and she had the most beautiful eyes.

She weighed 6lbs. 6oz. and was 20.5 inches long, a good size baby for her condition. At 4am we got a knock at the door. Dr. Kwan, the Neonatalogist that had started Alyssa's care, came in. He had his head slightly down and his hands folded in front of him. He came over to my bed side and said, "Mrs. Bradshaw, Alyssa isn't doing so well. We are going to have to place her on ECMO." Tom and I knew that the ECMO was not out of the question. His words were not very tactful and scared Tom and I half to death. Dr. DeCou came in around 4:30am to let us know that the decision to put Alyssa on ECMO is what they needed to do, and I had to sign my first Parent/Legal Guardian for care paper. YIKES! He then said that it would take about an hour and a half to get everything set up. He said he would come back up after the procedure and let us know how things went. That hour and a half was the longest wait of our lives. He came back at 6:30am and said that everything went smoothly. She had given them a little bit of a scare at the start because she was fighting them and didn't want the tubes in her. She was now heavily sedated and things were going well.

We visited Alyssa a lot that day. Since we were only 2 floors above her, it was not easy to lay there and not see her. We went down for the last time to say good night. We found out that all day long they had been weaning her off of the Nitrous Oxide, which was keeping her blood pressure stable. When we got down there, they had just taken her completely off of the Nitrous Oxide and her blood pressure was staying stable on its own!

July 22, 2004 - Tom called the Nurse and she said that Alyssa was doing so well, that they were debating whether or not to take her off the ECMO machine. They decided to keep her on for her own sake and safety since she was only 3 days old. That was very good news for us, and gave us hope that she may be able to have surgery and come home sooner then we had hoped for!

July 25, 2004 - Alyssa was taken off ECMO completely today by 3:30pm!!! We saw Dr. DeCou, the Pediatric Surgeon, and by 4pm, he had decided to do surgery that evening!!! We were all quite surprised bu,t with the way Alyssa had been doing, the shock of it all didn't last long!!

The first incision was made at 9:30pm. The surgery was over and Dr. DeCou was in the waiting room by 11:30pm! The surgery was a success! She is only on the ventilator at this point and holding her own! The nurse said that her blood gasses had came out better after surgery then they had been before, and that they were also better now then when she was on the ECMO machine! Dr. DeCou said that everything (her whole stomach, intestine, bowel, spleen and, even part of her liver) had been up in her chest cavity. Dr. DeCou assured us that it was the good part of her liver and shouldn't be a problem to move down.

July 31, 2004 - Tom called first thing in the morning like we usually did to check on Alyssa. They had put her on a jet ventilator around 5am because the regular ventilator just wasn't strong enough. We figured okay, maybe they had weaned her too quickly. We got to the hospital to visit her and she looked terrible. Her color was off. She was fighting the tubes and she was breathing really hard. The jet ventilator made her vibrate and it was a really scary situation. I couldn’t stand to be in the room and see my baby like that. We were told not to touch her, or talk to her, because they didn't want her to get over stimulated and get feisty and angry again. I couldn't stand not to be able to touch her. We kept our visit short that afternoon.

We visited with the Doctor and he wanted to show us her x-rays. He showed us one from the very beginning right after she was put on ECMO to that morning's. He said her lungs were improving and they look a lot better then when the first x-ray had been taken. He also noticed a little spot on the x-ray from today. On the top of the left lung there was a little fuzzy spot that he thought could be pneumonia. But we wondered how that could be because Alyssa wasn't running a fever. We didn't think that he realized that Alyssa had only had the ECMO cannulla inserted through her vein (and not both her vein and artery) because he said that they wouldn't be able to put her back on ECMO again. He said if the other ventilators didn't work then all we had was prayer.

We went to Muskegon that afternoon to be with my family because we needed to be around people. While we were there, Tom called every hour on the hour to check on Alyssa. She was still on the Jet, but her blood gases were still not what they would like to see, and she wasn't doing very well.

We got home from Muskegon around 7pm, and Tom called again to check on her. At that point, she was still on the Jet and they were talking about putting her on an osculating ventilator. When 9pm came around, Tom called again and found out that, between 7pm and 9pm, they had put her on the osculating ventilator and moved her back into the ECMO room with talk of putting her back on ECMO. They could still put her back on ECMO because they didn't use the artery last time. But this would be the last time because they would have disrupted both the vein and the artery on the left side. They don't put the cannullas on the right side because that vein and artery are connected to the left side of the brain, where all the cognitive thinking occurs.

The Pediatric Surgeon called us back at 9:15pm to get our permission to put Alyssa back on ECMO. He told us that the 2nd time around is risky. They will do their best and call us when they were finished. They told us that they wouldn't start for another half an hour to forty- five minutes.

This was so far the longest night of our lives. We had to sit and wait again to know if they were successful at placing the cannullas, or if she was even going to make it. Tom called again around 12:15am because we hadn't heard anything. The Nurse said they started late so there was another hour to go. The Doctor finally called at 1:15am and told us that the cannullas were inserted. He said that Alyssa was resting peacefully and that her stats at this point were now again excellent.

August 6, 2004 -Tom and I were very nervous this morning as any new parents would be with their baby in the NICU, and knowing that this is the last time she could go on ECMO. They had planned to take her cannullas out around 8:30 this morning, but had to push it back to 3 or 4 this afternoon because the OR was busy. The surgeons wanted to make sure they had plenty of time to take out the cannullas, because it's a very delicate procedure to remove them from her neck.
They ended up taking her cannullas out around 6:30 this evening because there was an emergency surgery that needed to be done, and Alyssa was A-Okay on the ECMO machine! She was at the lowest amount of flow with the ventilator turned up. She was handling it all well and there was no rush for the cannullas to be taken out.

She did absolutely wonderful! She handled the surgery well. The Surgeon even said that they had to hold her arms down before the sedative kicked in, because she wanted to help and pull the cannullas out herself! Tom and I were so excited because the whole day she was awake and alert - it was a good time for all of us to spend together.

We have had so many compliments on how beautiful Alyssa is!! They are so great to hear, and she has everyone wrapped around her little fingers!

August 12, 2004 -They took out her Chest Drainage tube today which means that Tom and I are now able to hold her!! That afternoon I got to hold her for the first time! She was 24 days old and what a moment that was! When she was in my arms, she settled right down and fell asleep!!! That was the first time she had ever been swaddled too, and we could really tell the difference in her attitude when

I was holding her. We both knew that was where she was supposed to be.
August 16, 2004 - What a day today was!!! Tom and I have been married for 1 year, it was Tom’s first day back at work, and Alyssa has quite a big day herself! They took her completely off the Nitric Oxide! The Neonatalogist decided to excabate her (take her vent tube out!) and she was moved into a Neo Nursery! The only tubes she had now was the IV still in her head, the oxygen tube half way up her nose and the feeding tube.

Alyssa was moved into Nursery 6, a smaller one then nursery 4. There are only 5 other babies in there besides her. We met a new nurse today. Her name is Jude and boy, is she great!!!! She is going to be Alyssa's Primary nurse during the day! She talks to us and jokes with us and just makes sure that Tom and I are doing okay as well. There is a lot of love on this NICU floor and we can feel it! Alyssa is a famous baby on 3 West!

September 20, 2004 - We are finally home and boy, does it feel good to be back! Last night went very well!! We made it through the night! Alyssa did well when we turned her feedings off from 11pm till 5am. Her blood sugar looked very good and we were all set to come home. Tom and I anxiously waited for the moment for them to tell us we were ready to go. We didn't get to meet with Dr. Beaumont for Discharge until 2pm.



Written by Alyssa’s mom, Megan Bradshaw (Michigan)
2005