By Dave Andrusko
Editor’s note. This post from a year today is representative of a kind of story we often make a part of NRL News Today. Hope you enjoy reading, or re-reading.
There are lots of ways to cover “miracle” stories about tiny-tiny babies who beat tremendous odds. Often, it’s a few quotes from the Mom and lots from medical personnel. Nothing wrong with the latter, but more of the former is what we want as readers. Especially when accompanied by pictures.
Enter “Lura Lauer, 28,” who, Josie Griffiths tells us, “went into labour on July 15, four months before her November 16 due date, and was warned any tot born before 24 weeks was unlikely to survive.”
Tragically, Cali, one of her twins girls, passed away after just two days but “Lyric, now three weeks old, is her mum’s ‘little fighter’ – and the parents are determined to keep the faith.”
At that point in the story, Lura takes over and her account is spellbinding.
When she went in for a July 14 appointment and told her gynaecologist and a specialist in multiple pregnancies about her contractions which were coming fast. “[T]he doctor reassured me it was probably Braxton Hicks.” And then, “The doctor said they wouldn’t resuscitate my babies because they didn’t have the capability to care for babies that young. It felt like a nightmare.”
The next day it became clear the babies were coming, way ahead of schedule. When she was told “the hospital we were at do not resuscitate if you give birth to a baby at less than 24 weeks” and that “if I was to give birth that day, I would have to say goodbye because they’re not viable at that age,” they made the decision “to transfer to the Novant Health Presbyterian Medical Center in Charlotte, which had better facilities for neonatal intensive care (NICU).”
I want you to read the full account, rather than summarize. Her “little fighter,” born at 1Ib, one ounce, is “defying all odds”!
Let me conclude with this from her Mom:
I think Lyric is an example that–even when the doctors are unsure–hope, faith, determination and love are such powerful energies. I believe that’s what’s keeping our daughter alive.