Mom brings baby home from NICU after not knowing she was pregnant
A Massachusetts woman says she was overjoyed to bring her first baby home from a hospital neonatal intensive care unit five months after she gave birth in an ambulance, not knowing she was pregnant.
Alysha MacDougall, 33, and her fiance Carl Pina, 43, brought their son Julian home from Tufts Medical Center in Boston on June 29, after Julian spent 154 days in the NICU.
"Having him home is amazing," MacDougall told ABC News. "We've been loving it."
MacDougall said she did not know she was pregnant before she delivered Julian in an ambulance on Jan. 26, amid blizzard conditions.
At the time, MacDougall said she had been taking pregnancy tests, which were negative, and was seeing her doctor for polyendocrine metabolic ovarian syndrome, or PMOS, which was previously known as polycystic ovary syndrome or PCOS, a condition that can impact one's fertility.
According to the American Pregnancy Association, PMOS can lead to unpredictable periods and increase one's chances of having a cryptic pregnancy, which is when someone is unaware they are pregnant.
On the day she gave birth, MacDougall said she had woken up in the early morning hours with "excruciating stomach pains" before she started bleeding and briefly lost consciousness.
The couple called 911 and while MacDougall was taken by ambulance to the hospital amid blizzard conditions, Pina started driving to meet them there. On the way, he said he received a phone call, informing him that MacDougall had given birth.
"I'm listening to her mother on speakerphone with the hospital. They said, 'We're just letting you know that Alysha's doing great and the baby's OK. It's a boy,' and I just sat there. I'm like, 'Did I just hear that right?'" Pina recalled.
MacDougall said doctors estimate Julian was born between 22 and 23 weeks gestation, less than half the time of a full-term pregnancy.
Dr. Jaclyn Boulais, medical director of the NICU at Tufts Medical Center, where Julian was transferred after birth, was one of Julian's doctors and said when he arrived hours after birth, he was "critically ill."
"He was intubated on a specialized ventilator that we use for preterm infants. He [had] very thin, gelatinous skin, extremely small, and was requiring help, essentially, from every system," Boulais told ABC News.
Despite Julian's uncertain future, MacDougall and Pina said they quickly made the decision to do everything to save Julian's life.
"We're like, 'We're gonna do whatever we can for Julian until, if the baby shows us that it's too much for him, then we'll revisit,'" MacDougall said.
"[After] we slept on it at the hospital, we said, you know, this is the moment that we stay positive," Pina added.
For premature babies like Julian, who are born so early, Boulais said the odds of survival are very low. She said Julian gradually overcame many challenges and received various supportive treatments for his lungs, eyes, insufficiency of his adrenal glands and blood pressure.
"The outcomes for a patient of this age and size are about 15% survival," Boulais said. "[It] is truly remarkable that he left this hospital with no bleeding around the brain [and is] alert, interactive, bottle feeding and really doing fantastic."
At birth, Julian weighed just under 1 pound, Boulais said. When he was discharged from Tufts Medical Center, he weighed 10 times that, at nearly 10 pounds.
"Not every baby who's born this early is able to survive or is able to go home without significant complications, but we want people to be able to have hope and to be given the best chance possible," she said.
She added, "His parents are also very special in terms of being able to take on this incredible stress and coming from this place of entirely unknown territory and sort of immediately switching to this parent mentality and choosing positivity and really partnering with the medical care team to make sure that he had every opportunity to do well."
Boulais said Julian went home on oxygen support, but overall, she said he is a "healthy baby."
MacDougall said welcoming Julian has been a dream come true for her.
"I never thought that I would have the opportunity to become a mom. So it's just, like, fulfilling a lot of like little girl dreams that I think a lot of girls might have," she said.
She added, "Our family's complete. I think Julian is a testament to our resilience and that we can overcome everything. So he's just a miracle baby."
