Please welcome ✨Cordelia Rae Askew✨, born July 27th at 11:16pm! She was only 1 lb, 3 oz - our micro preemie born at 26 weeks – three months early.

If you’ve scrolled back to this back-dated blog post, you’re probably curious about how we started this NICU journey…

Alyssa went to the doctor for a follow up appointment after several days of pain thinking something was wrong with her digestive system (a food aversion or a stomach bug). The doctor ran a bunch of tests for the second time that week, and booked an ultrasound later in the day to check out Alyssa’s gall bladder for gallstones.

We headed home to rest until the ultrasound appointment and the doctor called back around an hour later with the results and a recommendation to go straight to OB triage at the hospital.

At the hospital after more tests, Alyssa was diagnosed with HELLP syndrome, a rare and dangerous form of pre-eclampsia. Her liver enzymes were high, her platelet count was low, and the pain was actually her liver and not her stomach or gall bladder.

We met a lot of doctors and nurses in quick succession and they explained that Alyssa would need to undergo emergency c-section delivery that night at 26 weeks pregnant. It was a little scary because we also found out that our baby was smaller than expected – about the size of a 23 week old baby because the placenta had been impeding her growth while Alyssa was sick.

HELLP is pretty dangerous, and fairly rare, but the cure is baby delivery (with some drugs and some donated platelets) and Alyssa made a quick recovery from it while in the hospital and was luckily able to be discharged a few days later to recover from the surgery part at home.

We are eternally grateful to Alyssa’s doctor and assistant at the Polyclinic, and the incredible teams at Swedish in maternal family medicine and neonatal care who saved two lives that night. July 27th marked the beginning of our NICU journey and the beginning of our lives as a family of three.