It all started with our trip down to Southern California in June. Cassidy had two brothers graduating in the same week so we took advantage of the opportunity to go down and see her family. We spent Friday and Saturday in Los Angeles before heading down to San Diego and that's when everything went crazy.
Cassidy woke me up Saturday night and said that her stomach really hurt. We thought that it had maybe been something that she had eaten or just some discomfort that comes from being pregnant and didn't think much of it. When she woke mu up an hour later saying that it still hurt we thought there might be something wrong. She was having sharp pains in her stomach every two minutes or so that were lasting for about 30 seconds each. Looking back it's easy to guess that they might have been contractions but with her only being 24 weeks along at the time that was the last thing we thought it might be. She woke up her parents and after calling her doctor back in Provo, (who assured us that she was alright and that all she needed to do was take some Tylenol and lie down,) we gave her a blessing and thought that everything would be alright. She was still having the pains so I stayed up with her and wrote down the time that the pains were happening and how long they would last. When two hours later the pain was still consistent, we called the doctor in Provo again to ask if we should take her to the Hospital. The doctor again assured us that everything was fine, and that if she was still in pain, she should take some more Tylenol and take a warm bath. Cass went ahead and took the doctors advice and I took the opportunity to go back to bed, but half an hour later Cass woke me up again and said that she was bleeding.
We hurried and got her into the car and to an urgent care center near her house and the nurses checked her's and the babies heartbeats and let us know that we were in the wrong place and that we should be in an Emergency Room. We rushed to the Emergency Room and they put Cass and I in a room so that they could check her. The nurse checked and let us know that she was dilated to 8. They quickly threw her on a gurney and rushed her into a labor room upstairs. I ran downstairs and told her parents that she was going into labor and we all hurried upstairs. They tried giving her some steroids and other medication to keep the baby in and even tilted her backwards so gravity could help out too. A doctor came in and did some tests and they found there wasn't a lot of amniotic fluid in the placenta. He told us there was a chance that the baby would come then and let us know a little bit of what we would be up against. He let us know that babies who are born anytime before 24 weeks are what they consider non-viable and they don't usually try to save them or revive them. He also let us know that babies born at 25 weeks have over a 90% chance of living and that they usually go on to lead very normal lives. Our problem was that Cassidy was only 24 weeks and a day along which is a very gray area where anything can happen. He let us know that there is about a 40% to 50% chance that she would live and then it would just be day to day from then on. While he was talking with us Cassidy was having a hard time with the medication they were giving her, and just after the doctor left the baby's heart rate was starting to drop. They checked her and her placenta was pulling away from her uterus. They had to deliver the baby then for her to have a chance so they broke Cass's water and delivered her. She came out quick and arrived and 11:08 AM. She was 1 pound 4 ounces and was 12 inches long. My Father's Day girl, Cael Kamaile Malufau. As soon as she came out there were instantly 6 nurses around her pumping oxygen into her lungs and getting her set up with IVs and immediately hooking her up to tubes and the incubator. Cass pulled through great for not having an epidural or pain killers of any kind.
As soon as they had her stabilized, they took her down to the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. I went down with her and they showed me what it would be like when we visited and that we could only have two people in there with her at a time. It would have to be either Cass and someone or myself and someone. They let us know that she was doing alright at the moment but the next 24 hours would tell us a lot. They said that usually the biggest problems that babies born that early face is brain hemorrhaging and that they loose a lot of blood. They told us that they would be doing a brain scan on Cael in the next 24 hours. They also let us know that if she were to be healthy, she would be there for a few months and that we would need to plan on that. We felt good, the labor had gone as well as could be expected and she was stable.
Within minutes of her birth, Cassidy's sister had been on the phone and sending emails, asking for all of our family members and friends to pray for little Cael. We got together with our immediate family and decided that we would fast and pray for her the next day that her white blood cell count would go up so that she could fight off the infection that she had, (apparently that infection had caused Cassidy to go into labor early) and also that when they did the brain scan that it would be minimal. The doctors informed us that with brain hemorrhaging, there are 4 types, a type one or two would be minimal and any damage caused by it would be correctable, types 3 or 4 would be devastating and would most likely result in permanent brain damage.
During this time we were told that we wouldn't be able to give her a blessing because we weren't allowed to touch her, but that same day we came across a nurse in the NICU who just happened to have had the baby that she was caring for go home, so she asked if she could be the head nurse for Cael. She was LDS with kids at BYU and took care of everything so that we could go in and give her a blessing and even have more than just the two people in to see her at a time. That was just one of the many miracles that we experienced with our little girl.
The next day as we were fasting and praying, Cassidy and I went to see Cael, and were there when they came in to do her brain scan. We saw them do the ultrasound on her head and didn't know what to think. It wasn't until the doctor came to talk to us, and let us know that it was a type 4 hemorrhaging that we realized that Cael was in trouble. It was really tough and difficult to take the news, especially because we had all been fasting and praying for a different result. We had family and friends all over the country who were praying and even fasting with us and we were sure that she would pull through just fine. They let us know that they would do another scan the next day to see if there had been any changes and that we would just have to wait and see. As we all ended our fasts we decided that we would just start another one and that we would continue to have faith that a miracle would happen and that everything would be fine. When we found out the next day that the hemorrhaging was the same and that it was one of the worse bleed outs that the doctors had seen, they began to talk to us about our options. They told us that they would be able to keep her alive forever with the help of the machines that she was hooked to, but that she would be hooked to those machines for her entire life. They also told us that she would never be able to recognize us and that she wouldn't know anything that was going on around her, that her brain was the consistency of mayonnaise and that she would never recover. They let us know that we had the option to either continue with the life support or that we could choose to remove it. At first that was a thought that had never crossed our minds, we thought that we would still take her home, raise her in whatever state she might be in and be happy. But knowing that she wouldn't be happy and that she would just be trapped in that body, we decided that we were going to look at all of our options and do what was best for Cael.
Cassidy and I went to the Temple on Thursday morning, and we both had the distinct feeling that we needed to let her go. We knew that she was special and that there was a huge spirit in that tiny little body, we were able to see that in just the short time that we were with her. We decided that we would let her go on Friday morning, but that morning we found out that Cassidy's sister was actually going to fly out from Boston to be there with her, so we moved it back to Saturday. It was great though, it gave us an extra day to spend with her and we were able to hold her and spend almost the entire day with her. The nurses were sweet, they had Cassidy change her diaper and feed her and wash her and we were able to spend a lot of time with her. They didn't try to pressure us in any way to make one decision or another and they were always willing to let Cassidy do whatever she wanted to with Cael. They took such good care of her and we were so grateful for them. We had family and friends there who were able to see and meet Cael also, they were able to see what an awesome little girl she was. Other than the brain hemorrhaging she was such a strong little girl. They let us know that normally babies that young need to have the ventilator do the majority of the breathing for them and that anywhere from 40% to 50% was normal, but Cael was at the minimum 21% for the most of the time she was there. Her lungs and heart and everything else about her was developing perfectly and that made it even harder for us to understand how such a strong and healthy baby could have this one problem that would completely destroy her quality of life. It made it that much harder to make that decision to let our daughter go.
On Saturday morning Cassidy and I went to the Hospital early to be with Cael. We had originally planned on letting her go at 12:00 noon. Our family came later on that morning to see her and say their last goodbyes. The nurses didn't rush us or pressure us and at 1:00 PM we were still holding her. Cassidy's mom had made her a dress to be blessed in and around 1:30 we got her dressed and ready to go. The Hospital set up a separate room for us to meet in. They took all of the tubes off of her except for the oxygen, and we took her down to the private room where all of our family was there waiting for us. There we gave her a blessing and a name. When we had finished the blessing, they took the breathing tube out. They had told us that she would breathe on her own anywhere from about 20 seconds to a minute or two before peacefully passing, but she stayed and breathed on her own for an hour and fifteen minutes. We were able to spend that time just holding her and everyone in our family was able to hold her. After she was gone Cassidy and I bathed her and removed the last bit of tape that had been used to hold the tubes on her and she was gone.
