Harper Posey
On June 12, 2015, I went in for my 37-week appointment with my doctor. During the ultrasound, my doctor noticed that our baby girl’s abdomen was measuring small. He sent me to the Fetal Diagnostic Center for another ultrasound because he was not happy with his results. My husband, Matt, met me at the ultrasound. The doctor doing the ultrasound agreed with my doctor that her abdomen was small. The Doppler showed the blood flow from the placenta to the baby was decreasing. The doctor called my doctor and they decided that we were going to the hospital to have a baby.
We were sent to Kapiolani Women and Children’s Hospital in Honolulu, Hawaii. When we checked into the hospital, we were placed in triage. The doctors and nurses reviewed my charts and agreed that the baby needed to come out. Since our baby was breech, they asked if I wanted to do ECV or prefer to have a C-section. After talking with the doctors, we decided to try for the ECV because everything showed that they should be able to turn the baby just fine. The first attempt, they tried to turn her clockwise. When they stopped to check the heartbeat, she would move back under my rib cage. The second attempt, they tried counterclockwise and when they started turning her, her heartbeat dropped. We were rushed to the operating room for an emergency C-section. By the time, I was in the operating room, our baby’s heart rate was back up. When my doctor pulled our daughter out and cut the umbilical cord, she did not breathe. Immediately a team of doctors started working on her. They administered CPR to try to get a heartbeat. Once they got a heartbeat, she had gone fifteen minutes without oxygen. She was then rushed to the NICU to try and determine what was wrong. My husband, went with our daughter while I went to recovery. In the NICU, my husband named our daughter Harper Posey. After running multiple tests and X-rays, they determined that Harper’s lungs were not the correct size for a 37-week old baby. One lung was inflating three-quarters of the way and the other was only inflating a little bit.
“We were able to hold our baby, kiss her, and tell her how much she was loved. We only had 17 precious hours with Harper, but thanks to NILMDTS we were able to capture her memory forever.”
The NICU doctors had to determine if there was brain activity after being oxygen deprived for as long as she was. She was hooked up to a piece of equipment that was able to measure her brain waves and the doctors discovered she had minimal brain activity. We were told her heart probably would not make it through the day and that they could make her comfortable. The nurse then told us about Now I Lay Me Down to Sleep and that a photographer could come capture our last moments with our daughter. While the photographer took pictures of us with Harper, we were able to do skin to skin with her while she was on the ventilator.
We were able to hold our baby, kiss her, and tell her how much she was loved. We only had 17 precious hours with Harper, but thanks to NILMDTS we were able to capture her memory forever.
– Lauren Bennetts, Harper Posey’s Mommy
Thank you to Lauren and Matt Bennetts for sharing your beautiful Harper Posey and thank you to Karl Hedberg, NILMDTS volunteer photographer for being there for Harper’s family to capture their special moments with Harper Posey!
