Saving Caroline
After 25 weeks of a normal pregnancy, Tracy Davidson’s water broke. She drove herself to her OB-GYN’s office, and nurses there realized that the baby was coming. Tracy was taken by ambulance to the Emergency Department at Shady Grove Adventist Hospital.
The baby was going to be more than three months early. As the reality of her situation set in, Tracy asked Dr. Judith Gurdian what her baby’s chances were. “You are in the best of all places for this to happen,” her doctor replied.
Tracy had an emergency cesarean section, and within one hour from the time her water broke, little Caroline was born. Tracy remembers waking up and hearing the doctor tell her that she had a baby girl—1 pound, 8.2 ounces, and just 13 inches long. The nurses told her that the umbilical cord had been wrapped around the baby’s neck; Caroline had saved her own life by arriving early.
Tracy sees it differently. “I think the doctor, nurses, and this hospital saved her life. I had the best care available to me…” she says. Dr. Gurdian agrees. “The nurses were brilliant.”
Caroline spent several weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) on a ventilator and was fed through a tube. “The nurses were fabulous,” Tracy remembers. “They were so nice; they loved Caroline.” On Tracy’s first Mother’s Day, Caroline turned the corner. After a few days of eating without the tube, she was able to be nursed by her mother. Finally, after 103 days in the NICU, Caroline left Shady Grove Adventist Hospital for the first time.
Today, Caroline, is a healthy, happy six-year-old who excels in her schoolwork and loves to sing, dance and draw.
Shady Grove Adventist Hospital’s NICU is a Level III B NICU, which provides care for the most complex and critically ill newborns. The NICU has immediate and on-site access to pediatric medical subspecialty consultants and has the capability to perform advanced imaging with interpretation on an urgent basis. The NICU is staffed with experts that care for preterm babies with low birth weight, multiple births, and provide care for women giving birth later in life.