Happy Heavenly B-Day Baby Bailen! (pics includ.)

It's hard to believe it's been 9 years since I gave birth to that precious little creature. Bailen Joseph would have been celebrating his birthday today. Unfortunately he was taken from this earth way too soon. He was only 3 mths 11 days old.


Birth/Death 3/2/00-6/13/00
Birth Weight 3lbs 4oz & 14.25 inches

Here are some pictures of him.

I have typed out a quick story of what happened. I am just copying and pasting it from 2004, when I originally wrote it.

My pregnancy was textbook perfect up until about 28-29wks. I started showing signs of pre-eclampsia. I was put on full bed rest and written off of work. I was going to my midwives every other day for NST and monitoring. On 3-2 (33wks 5days) my NST was not good, the baby didn't move during the whole test. They just happened to of had a potluck that day and had food in the break-room so the nurse made me a plate in hopes to get the baby active. It didn't work. The brought in the office OB to perform an u/s and she determined I needed to go straight to the hospital for a c-section. (he was breech)

Got in my room at the hospital. Everyone and their cousin showed up I swear!! Anyway, had the c-section. Bailen was rushed out of the room immediately following delivery. They stitched me up and back to my room we went. They came in and said Bailen weighed 3lbs 4oz. They said other than his size he looked perfect. He was only on the vent for 20mins and they said he pulled it out!! Stubborn little guy. He was hooked up to an IV and they had an oz tent over the upper half of his body. He seemed perfect to us. Over the next 40 days of his hospital stay we found out how bad things really were. He was diagnosed with a heart defect called Tetralogy of Fallot. We were also told he had agenisis of corpus collusom (missing the part of the brain that connects the left and right side together) We had a cold hearted asshole of a dr. that told us this information. I asked him what it meant and he said that the baby would not be able to do anything. He would be stiff as a board, blind, and deaf. We were devestated! He seemed so perfect.......

April 10th, 2000 he got released from the hospital. YAY!!! He had a home nurse that visted every other day. She would come and weigh him and basically check him out and ask me how he was doing. After I believe 10 days the nurse admitted him back to the hospital. His weight had gone down. We spent the next week and 1/2 or so in the PICU. This time we were discharged with oxygen tanks, pulse ox monitor, gavage tubes for feeding and I forgot to mention we already had an apnea monitor. He didn't stay home for long. His pulse ox monitor constantly went off. Because of his heart condition anything over a 75 was good. A regular person runs about 97-100. He was way below the 75 mark. I called his ped and he had us come right in. Instead of admitting us to our local hospital he called an ambulance from Detroit Children's hospital to come and transport him there. I ran home and called Ronnie to come home from work.

After a day at DCH they decided to do a heart catherization. Its a very routine procedure but not for a 5lb baby. Bailen didn't do well with it at all. He required many blood transfusions. Afterwards he was so pale so cold. It was horrible. It took him about a week to recovery. We were sent home. Not even a week later we were back again. This time they decided to go ahead with his open heart surgery. They really wanted to wait until he was at least 10lbs but he couldn't wait, he was getting really bad. He only weighed 6lbs at this point.

He went thru surgery fine but afterwards his heart rate was over 200 for many hours. They said they were trying everything they could to bring it down. They said when the heart over works it can damage the other organs. The next day he was getting so much better. Because of swelling they had to leave his chest open for a couple days before stitching/stapling it back together. He seemed to recovery very well. His surgery was on May 19, 2000 and he was released on June 6th I believe (I would have to check my records) anyway he was off the gavuage feedings, oxygen and pulse ox monitor. He only required his apnea monitor.

On June 11th a friend and I went to Farmer Jacks (grocery store) to pick up some food. When I took Bailen out of the car he was white as a ghost. I told my friend, I don't think he is breathing. She said of course he is Cynthia, he is just sleeping. I shook him and he didn't respond. I RAN in the grocery store and scream to call 911. I was in a panic. I took Bailen out of the car seat and layed him down and started infant CPR (we had to learn it before bringing him home the very first time) then this off duty cop came up and introduced himself and took Bailen from me. He asked what happened to him (from the scars on his chest- it was like 90 degrees and I just had a little onsie on him) I told him "open heart surgery, please help him" He said I can't do CPR on him then. I screamed at him to fucking do something or give him back to me. Finally the paramedics got there and worked on him. By this time it was a good 10 mins from when I noticed he wasn't breathing (too long.....) We were rushed to the ER where the dr. said it wasn't good. I could tell it wasn't. Bailen was very cold ....so cold. After 2 EEG's showed no brain activity, we decided to turn the machine off on June 13, 2000 (6 days before Ronnie's first father's day) We had all of our family and friends there with us. I held him till he stopped breathing. It was the worst day of my life.....and now I am bawling like crazy.

LOVE YOU SWEETHEART!!!