
Image by BJC Healthcare
CV NEWS FEED // After nine months in a neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), a baby born at 23 weeks and five days was finally able to go home this week.
Evangeline “Evie” Statler’s due date was July 16, but she was born on March 24 in an emergency cesarean section at a community hospital in Missouri.
Madison “Maddie” Statler and Dylan Statler shared wonderful news this week: St. Louis Children’s Hospital in Missouri discharged Evie on Monday, December 18 after months of intensive care.
Maddie, 27, shared their story with “Good Morning America.” She described her pregnancy as “relatively uneventful” until, at 23 weeks, she woke up with back pain.
“I noticed that my stomach felt kind of tight and different and then I started having contractions later that day,” Maddie said:
I was in denial though that I could be in labor because I was like, “I’m 23 weeks. There’s no way that I’m in labor right now.” And then I had some bleeding later that evening and then that’s kind of what prompted us to go to the hospital.
She had been at the hospital for five days with continuous bleeding when her sister, an obstetric nurse, “realized something was wrong” during a visit.
“[My sister] noticed right away that Evangeline’s heart rate was skyrocketing all of a sudden, and she ran out the door and everything happened really fast after that,” Maddie explained:
Next thing I know, the doctor and all these nurses and the anesthesiologist was coming in the room, and they were also trying to hook me up to get a blood transfusion and get me back to [the operating room] because I was hemorrhaging from what they later found out was a placental abruption.
The doctors delivered Evie through an emergency cesarean section, and the Statlers were told that Evie “made a cry” when she was born.
“Whenever we heard that she made a cry, that made us feel like … she definitely had some fight in her, and that was reassuring,” said Maddie.
The doctors gave Evie “less than 50% chance of survival,” her father Dylan, 30, shared with GMA.
“We didn’t expect any of this to happen,” Dylan said. “It’s kind of a nightmare scenario.”
Evie was transferred to St. Louis Children’s Hospital in July, “where she was being treated for pulmonary hypertension, or high blood pressure in the arteries of the lungs, among other complications,” according to GMA.
Dylan said:
Each day was kind of like a victory that we got through – like, if we got through another day there at the beginning, we counted that as a win. That’s all we could really do, is take one day at a time, because everything was so kind of scary and new.
Washington University Neonatologist Dr. Melissa Riley assisted throughout Evie’s time at St. Louis’ Children’s Hospital. “When Evie got here, as sick as she was, honestly, I think our team was a little hesitant to promise success,” Riley told GMA:
We anticipated a very long stay. So when she arrived here, as sick as she was … at that time, if you would have said, “Dr. Riley, is Evie going to be home by Christmas?” I would have said, “I’m not betting on that one.”
Dylan said that Evie’s discharge before Christmas is “kind of symbolic. Because she’s kind of like a gift or a miracle baby.”
Riley added that Evie’s discharge from the hospital is “a testament to Evie, to her feistiness. It’s a testament to her family. And it’s a testament to the fantastic team she has here in the NICU.”
The parents expressed gratitude to their family, friends, and the NICU team that cared for Evie.
“They really have been like a light in our dark days,” Maddie said. “And they’ve laughed with us and cried with us, and just really been there [every] step of the way.”
The parents also said they want to share Evie’s story “to give hope to other families and individuals who may be in a similar situation.”
“Those stories from the beginning helped us a lot. We were looking up stuff with similar situations, and just hearing a success story meant so much to us from the very beginning,” said Dylan. “And you never know who you can touch or whose life you can change, just from a story.”
