A year ago, Amanda Walker thought she might never be able to celebrate Mother’s Day.

She had suffered two miscarriages, had surgery on her uterus and endured exhausting, twice-weekly trips to Dallas for fertility treatments, with no luck.

Then, on a Thursday last October, an at-home test indicated she was pregnant. The 30-year-old Fairfield woman was thrilled — but nervous.

Amanda Walker, 30, holds her newborn baby, Brylee Renee. Brylee was born at 31 weeks, nine weeks shy of her June due date.
Rod Aydelotte/Waco Tribune-Herald

Every Thursday that she was still pregnant was a victory. She knew something could go wrong. It had happened before.

On April 20, Brylee Renee Walker was born — nine weeks shy of her June due date.

The 3-pound baby was immediately taken to Hillcrest Baptist Medical Center’s neonatal intensive care unit, where Amanda Walker will celebrate her first Mother’s Day.

“The first time I saw her, I was an emotional wreck,” Walker said. “She was so itty-bitty. I was counting her fingers and toes. It was hard to see her hooked up to all those machines.”

Walker, who was laid off last year from her job at the Fairfield coal plant, is staying at a Waco hotel so she can spend as many hours as possible with Brylee. Walker and her husband, Bubba, an oilfield worker, hope to take their baby home within a month.

More than 4,500 babies have been treated at Hillcrest’s NICU since it opened in 1990.

Pictures of smiling, active kids and teens adorn the walls of a nursery filled with tiny babies hooked up to machines and tubes. Each picture indicates that each of those carefree children was once hooked up to those machines and tubes.

“They give some inspiration to our families,” said Sandra Rabbe, Hillcrest’s NICU and pediatrics nurse manager.

On average, about 250 of the 3,000 babies born each year at Hillcrest require a stay in the intensive care nursery, Rabbe said. The average length of stay is about 13 days, and most babies are admitted because they were born ahead of their due dates or suffer from an infection.

Andrea Dossey, a nurse practitioner, said it’s very rare that a NICU baby doesn’t survive.

A lot of them return each year on their birthdays and around the holidays. One Waco girl, a teenager now, brings carnations each year for the nurses on her birthday.

Keeping NICU festive

The nurses try to make holidays special. Santa Claus visits the NICU each year for pictures. Today, overnight nurses will put pictures of the babies and their footprints on Mother’s Day cards, which they will leave for the moms.

Because only parents and grandparents are allowed in the NICU, Walker’s extended family, including two teenage stepsons, Blake and Brady, have been keeping up with Brylee’s progress through Facebook.

“She has her own little fan page,” said Walker, who is studying to be a vocational nurse.

There is nothing medically wrong with Brylee, but she has to be able to regulate her own body temperature and heart rate before she is well enough to go home. Even then, she’ll wear a cardiac monitor for the first month or so.

Neonatalogist Dr. Darrell Wheeler and the nurses encourage NICU moms to practice “kangaroo care,” in which the mothers hold the infants under their shirts for skin-to-skin contact.

Friday, Walker stroked Brylee’s back while the baby was tucked under her shirt. Walker said doctors think she developed a condition in which the placenta began to slowly break apart.

Delivery by C-section

The week before Brylee was born, Walker was bleeding. She and her husband made tearful, hour-and- 20-minute trips to and from the emergency room in Waco. Nothing out of the ordinary was showing up on ultrasounds, but Walker insisted something was wrong.

“I was just so scared,” she said. “At any time, I knew it could all just be taken away.”

When Walker’s bleeding continued and her water broke, the doctor determined Brylee would be healthier outside of her.

She was delivered by cesarean section and taken to NICU.

“My fear was for her,” Walker said. “We had no idea what was going to be wrong with her.”

While she and Bubba once celebrated each week that Walker was still pregnant, they now celebrate each day.

Each tiny improvement. Each fraction of a pound gained. Each time Brylee shows her gummy, toothless smile.

“It’s exciting to be able to celebrate Mother’s Day,” Walker said. “I never figured it would happen for me. I wish we were at home, but she’s happy and healthy. And that’s all I can ask for.”

equinn@wacotrib.com

757-5748