Trip’s Birth Story

I’ll never forget the feeling of driving away from the hospital with our 3rd miracle baby in silence listening to “Jubilee,” by Maverick City Music. Gannon and I sat there with tears running down our faces. After a couple minutes he said, “We made it. I feel like we’ve been holding our breathe for the last 9 months, but we made it.”

That feeling will forever be engrained in my heart. A sigh of relief. A gratitude of answered prayers. And a close to a very long chapter. 2,815 days to be exact. That’s how many days it took us to grow our family. Everyone’s story is different, but the journey to our babies has been anything but conventional. It tested our faith, our marriage and our mental capacity. But as we drove away from that hospital for one last time, we realized – we made it!

Trip Legend – you’ve kept us on our toes from the moment we found out about you. But you my darling boy, are worth the fight just like your sweet brothers.

August 12, 2021 at 7:07 am you decided to make your grand appearance. My prayer after we found out about our NAIT diagnosis was that you would let us know when it was time to come. And boy, you did just that!

At 2:30 am, I woke up to some intense cramping. I had been having contractions off and on for about a week. If I over did it that day they would be closer together, but nothing less than 7 minutes apart. But at 2:30 it felt different. So I got up to use the bathroom for the hundredth time in the night and as soon as I sat down on the toilet I felt water leaking down my legs and realized my underwear were soaked. I immediately yelled out to Gannon that my water broke. And that poor man said, “it’s fine babe come back to bed we have a doctors appointment at 10:30 in the morning.” Gotta love him 🤪

Right after that I wiped and realized I lost my mucus plug. I’ve never seen one before but I immediately knew what it was. I’m like no dude we need to go to the hospital now! We are having a baby! I instantly called my mom and praise the Lord she answered right away. That night before I went to sleep she asked how I was feeling and I told her I didn’t think anything was going to happen. I had spent the whole day snuggled at home with the boys and we had a productive day organizing and getting things ready. Guess I was preparing and didn’t even realize it!

My mom was shocked and said she would be right over. We threw our last minute items in our hospital bags, ran upstairs to kiss the boys one more time and left for the hospital. I was shaking, leaking and cramping the whole way down there! I never imagined that my water would break. I feel like infertility has taken away so many “normal” aspects of child bearing. But the excitement of all this happening unexpectedly was something I’ve always longed for.

Honestly, this entire pregnancy I felt like the Lord has given us a piece of “normalcy.” We found out we were spontaneously pregnant, my water spontaneously broke, and I got to have “real” contractions! Which sounds silly but I’ve always wanted to experience a vaginal birth and I didn’t get to because of my septum repair on my uterus. But God gave me a little piece of feeling normal this time and honestly those minor contractions were enough of the “real” experience for me, haha!!

I decided to call the hospital and let them know we were headed that way. I wanted them to call Dr B and let them know. I was so anxious he wouldn’t be there and the doctor on call wouldn’t know our case. Even though Dr B assured me several times that all the doctors knew about our situation. As soon as we got to triage they had a room ready for us.

By this point, my contractions had started to pick up. The nurses wanted to make sure it was in fact my water that broke so they checked it and my cervix. And they said you’re having a baby today! I called my mom and told her it was time to come up to the hospital. So we called my MIL and asked her to go to our house and watch the boys. By this time it was around 4:30. Everything was moving so quick!

Labor and delivery was super busy that night so they kept me in triage until an OR was ready for me. And this is when I found out Dr B was actually the doctor working that night. Our second huge answer to prayer. I couldn’t believe it and felt like the whole situation was a total God thing. Trip must have known and said, “ok mama it’s time to get me out!” I didn’t get to see Dr B until I was in the OR so I asked about 100 times to check and make sure he was going to be the one to do my c section. And he was! Thank you Jesus for that. With the boys I hemorrhaged out so I was anxious about that happening and with our NAIT situation. But the Lord protected us that night.

Around 5:30 they wheeled me up to the OR. My contractions were intense and I felt overwhelmed. With the twins our c section was more or less planned. I went in early because my blood pressure was high. But we knew we were going to have them on Friday morning. So it wasn’t as overwhelming as experiencing it all so unexpectedly.

As I was walking back to the OR a doctor pulled me aside and said we just got your labs back and you tested positive for syphilis. We know that it has to be a false positive because we’ve tested you multiple times throughout your pregnancy and IVIG treatments but we have to let you know. I’m like, “I’m sorry what?!” I’m about to experience the happiest moment of my life and that is dropped on me?!

I’ve debated about sharing that because 1. it’s awkward and 2. I don’t want people to think different of me. But apparently it’s can happen while getting IVIG treatments to get false positives on different tests. And leave it to me to have another rare thing like that happen. You have to remember I got around 10,000 different peoples platelets put in my body. I decided to share it in case this happens to any of my other NAIT mama’s. Luckily I got retested a couple weeks ago and it came back negative. But boy, that was another unexpected moment. I’ll never forget the look on the doctors face when she was telling me. I think we both looked like deers in headlights. And now looking back, I can laugh about how incredibly awkward that whole situation was.

Once I got back to the OR they started my spinal block and things got moving. The c section itself took a lot longer than with the boys. Dr B had to cut out my old scar and he had to cut lower because Trip was so far head down that he didn’t want to risk any damage when pulling him out in case his platelets were low when he was born. One of the main concerns with NAIT is brain hemorrhage.

At 7:07 am, Trip Legend was born and filled the room with his strong cries. I’ll never forget hearing that beautiful sound for a 3rd time. You literally hold your breathe until then. The NICU team was ready and brought him to the room next to the OR to evaluate him. I could hear Trip screaming the whole time, which brought me so much joy because I felt like it was God’s way of saying he’s ok.

After a couple minutes they brought Trip over so I could meet him. He was soooo beautiful. And then he was off to the NICU and Gannon followed behind. They tested his platelets and they were 74,000 which was amazing compared to the boys. Which ensured us that the IVIG treatments worked! I am so thankful we caught the diagnosis when we did and he was healthy. In the NICU they monitored him and the following day his platelets dropped to 59,000. If they get below 50,000 they want to do a platelet transfusion. But when they tested him again the next day they jumped back up to 75,000 and then 90,000 after that.

Looking back at that entire experience with the NAIT diagnosis and the treatment I just can’t help but thank God. He truly covered us in peace and surrounded us with the best medical professionals. Goodness, what a journey this has been. And lucky for us, the best part is just now beginning. We can’t wait to raise these 3 little boys to know the Lord, know they were SO prayed for and wanted and most importantly so loved. Thank you for following along side us, for praying for us and for truly feeling like our family. Our fertility journey might be over, but we will never forget how we got here and hope that it can continue to help others in the future.

We love you all dearly,

Gannon, Kate, Jett, Kruz & Trip

Literally crying typing out our 3 miracles names. Thank you Lord for our family!

Here’s Trip’s birth video!

***Warning it does show during my c-section!