Mark Winder DeVore arrives

The short version of our story is as follows. On Aug 18th, Mark Winder DeVore was born weighing in at a hefty 3 lbs. 9 oz. He was born via emergency c-section at 28 weeks gestation. So why so early? Holly had placental abruption. After a bit of a rocky start, both Mom and Mark are on their way to recovery.



So, here is the long version.

As you may or may not remember our last episode of “Holly is pregnant, time to bring in the National Guard”, Holly has a certain difficulty when it comes to pregnancies. Though she is quite skilled in many areas, when it comes to cervixes she is completely incompetent. This means that with each pregnancy since Jacob she has had to be sewn up to keep the little guys in until it was actually time for them to show up. Having done this for both Brigham and Caleb we thought we pretty much had the process down. Granted it was a bit complicated but we pretty much knew what to expect.

Lesson learned: Whenever you think you have learned what to expect remember that you can never know what to expect.

Back in the spring we met with Holly’s doctor and laid out a basic plan for the pregnancy. But, as Eisenhower stated, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.” Holly’s cervix began to thin much more rapidly than it had in past pregnancies. Her cerclage that was supposed to happen at 14 weeks, ended up being done at 8 weeks.

Soon after, we joined my entire family on a trip to Williamsburg, Virginia. A few days into the trip Holly began to bleed. Fortunately we had a perinatologist on site and were able to borrow an ultrasound machine from a neighboring town. The baby was ok but Holly was going to be on bed rest for the rest of the pregnancy. She was at 13 weeks.

So bed rest began. We had done bed rest before, but never for so long. Before the bleed the goal had been to stay off of bed rest. Now that that goal was shattered the new goal was to stay out of the hospital.

At 23 weeks that goal was decimated as well. Holly’s cervix was thinning too fast and her doctor felt she needed to be admitted immediately to the hospital. Now the goal was to keep the baby in there as long as possible.

When Holly was 26 weeks I took our boys out to California to spend some time with the grandparents. It was going to be a pretty good deal. I would take the kids out, stay for a few days and then return to Virginia to have about a week without any kids for about a week or so. After their stay was up my mother and sister-in-law would bring the kids back to Virginia.

I got some time to catch up on work as well as to spend some more time with Holly. Holly was actually doing great. Her spirits had remained up besides being stuck in a hospital bed for over a month and the baby seemed to be doing well. We thought we might even be able to make it all the way to the end of October.
Then plans changed a bit.

My kids were supposed to fly home on a redeye on Monday evening. On Saturday my Mother called to tell me that she had fallen and couldn’t get up. The reason she couldn’t get up was because he had broken her kneecap. She kept saying that she could still bring the kids back on the plane, making it sound like she had also hurt her head in the fall.

Monday morning I caught a flight to Los Angeles to pick up my kids and fly back to Virginia with my sister-in-law, Laura, who was in the process of moving to Virginia. By 10am I was in California, enjoyed a Southern California afternoon and evening and then caught the 9pm flight to Virginia.

It was great. The kids passed out. I wasn’t able to sleep but I didn’t have to deal anyone screaming or running around. As is my custom, as soon as we landed I opened my phone to see what occurred on the world while I had been momentarily offline. There was a text message waiting for me from Holly that simply said, “I am bleeding. Baby is fine but call me. I am a little nervous.”

Holly had started to bleed during the night and they were moving her down to labor and delivery since she was also contracting. My brother (Laura’s husband who had already arrived in Virginia) picked us up at the airport. I ran into the house to put all of the kids back to bed and then headed over to the hospital.

Things didn’t seem to be going well at the hospital. The contractions were becoming more intense and it looked like we were going to have a baby born at 28 weeks. The contractions got worse. And worse. And then really bad. In fact, it became one continuous contraction. I have never seen Holly in so much pain and there wasn’t really anything I could do.

Once it reached this point, the doctors realized that these weren’t normal contractions. One continuos contraction is a sign of placental abruption which is basically when your insides are ripping themselves apart.

I have never seen doctors move so fast. Everyone started rushing around and you could really get the sense that this was something serious. For the first time in my life I began to worry that my wife might not make it through the day.

Everyone performed exceptionally and “Male DeVore Baby” was born weighing in at 3 lbs. 9 oz. (very large for a 28 weeker). He was rushed to the NICU and Holly went to recovery. Things had been even more complicated then we initially thought. Not only did she have placental abruption (placenta ripping away from the uterus) but she also had placental accreta (placenta embedded in the uterine wall). Both cause increased bleeding and can be very dangerous to the health of the mother.



Holly was very weak after the delivery but the baby seemed to be all right. She had hoped to get down to the see him that evening but was just too weak. Later that evening it became apparent that she had lost a LOT of blood. The nurse described her as being as white as the bed sheet. They started a 3 unit blood transfusion (every medical person I tell that to says, “Wow, that’s a lot.”).

Meanwhile, Male DeVore Baby was doing fine. We hadn’t really come up with a name yet since he wasn’t supposed to show up until October. We began making a list of possible names and finally settled on Mark. Holly liked it but wanted to let it sink in for a bit before we finalized on it.

When I went to the NICU they asked me what his name was. I told them we were thinking about Mark. The nurse got this shocked look on her face and said, “We felt like we needed to call him something so this morning we started calling him Mark.” I was pretty sure that Holly wanted to see him in person before finalizing on the name so I reaffirmed to the nurse that we were still in trial mode. From that point on he became known as Maybe Mark.

Maybe Mark was doing great. He didn’t have to be intubated, no bleeding on the brain and no other complications.

Mom was still having a rough go of it though. She basically couldn’t sit up without becoming extremely dizzy. Her first trip to the bathroom resulted in 5 nurses rushing in to carry her back to her bed. This went on for several days. She had every test imaginable, chest x-ray, CT scan, ultrasound, EKG. She got to know every group in the hospital. Everything came back normal. Except for her stool test.

Holly had contracted a bacterial infection called c-difficil which is apparently a nasty bug that can wreak havoc on your bowels. She was just getting strong enough that she felt she could go see Maybe Mark and now she was on isolation. No visits from the kids and everyone that entered the room had to wear gowns and gloves. She was initially told that she would be that way for about 7-10 days. This was on Saturday. We decided that Maybe Mark couldn’t last without a name for another week (he was already 5 days old), dropped the Maybe prefix and added a Winder after to make him Mark Winder DeVore.

By Monday the news was better. They were going to release her from the hospital on Tuesday and she was finally allowed to go down and see Mark.

The recovery from home has still been tough for her. The combination of several months on bed rest along with some major surgery, significant blood loss and a bacterial infection has made it a bit difficult to bounce back as quickly as she would like. But she is well on her way. She even drove herself to Target the other day.

Mark is doing extremely well. He is just about 1 month old and almost 5 lbs. He will hopefully be coming home in the next 2-3 weeks.

It has definitely been a wild ride. We have seen many miracles along the way. I will point out just a few in case you may have missed them.

Holly was in the hospital because she had an incompetent cervix. This ended up having zero impact on her pre-term labor. The real culprit was the placental abruption. But the incompetent cervix mean that she had been on bed rest, allowing the baby to grow, she had received several shots that helped the baby grow faster, and when the abruption happened she was right in the hospital, allowing her to be treated immediately.

The day Mark showed up, Jonathan and Laura had literally just moved into our basement. They completely took over kids while I spent much of my time at the hospital.

Holly had a fever for several days after the delivery which didn’t permit her to go see Mark. This gave the doctor’s enough time to discover the c-diff infection. Had she passed that on to Mark it could have been very bad for him.

There are many more but those have been some of the most dramatic. We so appreciate all those who have helped out over these last few months. We will keep you posted on how Mark is doing.