My daughter turns 21 today.

I’ve often thought of writing a book about this little person, because although she may be small, her life is very very large. On this occasion, I wanted to share her story, all of it, so that you may know how much she means to us and everyone around us. How our lives changed in an instant. How I know God has a plan for every person. And how she has taught me more than I could ever teach her. It all started the day I became a mom.

Dave and I, along with my mom, my sister Sheri and her son Ben, my in laws, and my sister in law Nicole were vacationing in Crescent Bar - yep! The same vacation spot where we are now owners. We had rented a mobile home in the park and some of our family members joined us for a week in the sun. I was 6 months pregnant. I had been to the doctor before Dave and I left town bound for a weekend in Montana for a friend’s wedding. We met up in Crescent Bar on Sunday afternoon.

By Wednesday, I started to experience cramping. I didn’t know what was happening, but my sister informed me it was likely constipation. So I suffered through it and she took me for walks around the park to help walk it off. Little did any of us know, that was the worst thing I could’ve done. I didn’t sleep at all that night. By Thursday mid-day I had started to bleed, so I walked to the pay phone and called my doctor in Seattle. They told me to come back so they could check me out. Thankfully, my sister suggested we stop by the emergency room up the hill in Quincy before heading back across the mountains. My mom, Dave and I jumped in the car and although I have what Dave describes as a super human pain tolerance, the cramping on our way up the hill was more than I could handle.

My mom and I got checked in and within 10 minutes discovered that I was completely dialated and in full labor. The hospital went into high alert and Dr. Walsh was immediately called in off his farm. Then time stood still ... I had no idea how long it took him to get there and I was only hearing snippets of conversations. What seemed like an instant later, Dr. Walsh arrived and the room filled with hospital staff. 

Dave left me with my mom to get in touch with the Golf Pro Shop at Crescent Bar, because 21 years ago, cell phones were just not a thing! It just so happens that my sister was shopping in the pro shop and overheard the saleswoman complain about someone calling from the hospital asking for someone to be sent to one of the trailers to let a family know someone was giving birth up the hill. My sister apparently yelled at her “That’s my sister!” And ran out to get everyone else loaded up and to the hospital.

“Do we get the ambulance ready to take her to Wenatchee?” “Do we call Seattle or Spokane for the helicopter?” “Son, this baby is so small YOU could give birth to it.” Why are the medical supplies kept in a red Craftsman Tool Chest? Why is the patient next door yelling and pretending to throw up? Why did the nurse on staff drop the IV on the floor? (Someone please stop the blood from running down my arm ...) Why is the room so COLD! Why is my mom rubbing the skin off my arm! And I recall telling Dave over and over again that I was sorry ... sorry that we were losing the baby. Sorry that I couldn’t hold it in. Sorry that I couldn’t do the one thing that I was supposed to do.

All of this occurred within about 40 minutes after arriving at the hospital. 

Dr. Walsh caught her in the crook of his arm after 3 pushes and CPR was immediately begun. They kept her in the room with us and bagged her for the entire 40 minutes it took for the Seattle based Lifeflight helicopter to arrive. The crew, which consisted of 3 women, ran in and took over care. My mom called them Charlie’s Angels because the 2 nurses were brunette and ginger and the pilot was a blonde. They intibated her, wrapped her in a reflective blanket to keep her warm and who knows what else. I recall them bringing the isolate over to me before leaving to show me her little feet kicking, and I recall thinking I don’t know how she’s even holding those big feet up with those toothpick little legs and why is the top of her head completely black?

Daisy weighed only 1 pound, 13 ounces and was 12 inches long.

And that’s all I remember ... because apparently I was racked with an infection, causing my extreme fever and the pre-term birth. I think at points throughout the less than 2 hours I might have passed out, but my brain was definitely in a fog.

We later learned that less than a month prior to her birth, the hospital staff was sent through a training on premature delivery. God surely had a plan for her life.

Following her birth, they piled warm blankets on me and pumped me full of antibiotics, and I think I fell asleep. When I woke up, there was nobody left in the room and I couldn’t move. I almost couldn’t breathe! I had a load of blankets on me I couldn’t even see the end of my bed and the room was SO hot! They had bumped up the temperature in the room to accommodate Daisy’s birth and my fever was headed down so the heat was stifling! The baby was gone, Dave was gone, mom was gone, all the hospital staff was gone. Then I saw the janitor stick his head around the door and I asked for help ... a nurse returned and told me that the entire hospital and my family were out near the helicopter pad watching baby Daisy Jo being flown to Seattle. 

Two thoughts entered my mind, how do I get all these blankets off and why are they calling her Daisy Jo? 

Apparently, the last name Dave and I told my mom before leaving town for Montana was Daisy Josephine. It was a name on our list, but we’d re-prioritized the list during our drive to the wedding - my mom had yelled “We have a Daisy Jo” when my girl came sliding out and the hospital needed a name to give her before sending her on her way to Seattle. The nurse helped me with the blankets and slowly my family returned to my room.

Dave and my mom immediately left for the University of Washington, leaving me in Quincy to fight my infection. Dave’s parents and sister drove our van back to Seattle that evening after packing up the trailer, Sheri and Ben stayed with me so they could bring me home the next day and I signed a Quincy Valley Hospital birth certificate for the name Daisy Josephine Jacobsen.

I was receiving hourly reports from the UW about Daisy, and after awhile all I really needed to hear was that she was still alive. I even received a random call from a friend who had been riding his bike in Eastern Washington who’d found out from a friend that I’d given birth! He’d tracked me down to make sure I was okay. Dave called his work, who spread the news to all the drivers and one was dating a friend of mine who told everyone else! 

Since this story is about Daisy, and not about me, I’ll spare you the details of what Sheri and I did to get Quincy to finally release me and the trip across the pass to the UW NICU, but the next afternoon I was finally able to see my daughter and my mom gene kicked in. Here she was, this tiny little thing all snuggled up in this enclosed box. Wires everywhere. Eyes covered up, no diaper, couldn’t breathe on her own, and who I couldn’t touch without going through what seemed like a 10 point inspection. Fr. Tony Haycock arrived on day 2 to baptize her to assure us she would be safe in case the worst happened.

So began my new life. 

I had a part time paralegal job I resumed after about a week of recovery because I didn’t have a baby to take care of. So I would work in the morning, drive to visit Daisy every afternoon, and come home evenings to make dinner for Dave. Dave would come up on Thursdays when we had talks at the NICU for new parents and weekends to spend time with his baby girl. He was working so hard and would pick daisies every day on his route to carry with him in his truck to remind him of her all day. 

It took about a month to get the opportunity to hold her and even longer to give her a bath. I was pumping every 2 hours, 24-hours a day in order to freeze and store enough milk to get her through the first 3 months of life while she was being fed through a tube. We were trying to resume our lives, but it seemed we were in some sort of holding pattern. Nobody really knew what to say, my friend threw me a baby shower, and we were suddenly the first of all of our local friends to have a baby.

By the time my mom reached Ireland on her planned “pre-birth” tour and visit to Fr. Tony’s hometown to celebrate his anniversary as a priest, people in the pubs and B&B’s in Ireland were already talking about this tiny baby he had baptized. My mom smiled and told them Litttle Daisy was hers. Her 6th grandchild - the miracle baby. We were receiving calls from all over the world, people praying and sending good thoughts to Seattle.

It finally took my mom and I taking shifts to bring Daisy home, which we did a week before her original due date, on September 25th. Her last goal was to feed exclusively by bottle before she could be released, so I took a few days off work to get to the hospital by 8am to relieve my mom who had gotten there around 8pm the night before. Dave even came up some nights after work to get a feeding or two in when he could. 

And then we walked out of the hospital, with a car seat and a tiny 5 pound marionette baby with no more strings. Nobody called security as we left the front doors of the hospital. The staff had to teach us how to get her safely in the car seat and it into the car! I had a diaper bag full of these doll size diapers, 1 outfit my sister Jenny found that was small enough to fit her, a few of these 2 ounce bottles and a big binder of instructions. 

And that was it - we were parents. Okay, so that wasn’t EVERYTHING, but enough for this post. Perhaps I’ll write more posts about her Grade IV brain bleed, her shunt surgery and trip to Children’s, her second shunt surgery, subsequent eye palsy, breathing issues, eye problems, diaper rash, visitors to the hospital, her wonderful new pediatrician, the nurses who cared for her and being the only mom in a NICU of more than 50 preemies with a child with brain trauma having scores of neurosurgeons visit daily.  

If I survive this posting, I will continue posting about her incredible life story. Daisy hates nothing worse than attention being drawn to her story - except maybe me sharing her baby pictures. I’m risking life and limb telling it again, but it’s MY life story as much as it is hers. I’m proud of her and proud of myself for being the kind of mom she needed. To both of us for being strong enough to fight through surgeries, therapies and first opinions. We’ve survived 21 years together and I’m ready to see where our lives take us now!

But for now, I’d better run, I’ve got a 21st celebration to get ready for!