Baby girl born 4 months early and just 14 ounces finally goes home in time for first Christmas: ‘She is our gift’
For one grateful family, there’s no place like home for the holidays.
A Missouri girl who was born the size of a “little baby bird” four months early and spent nearly 10 months in the hospital finally made it home — just in time to be her parents’ greatest Christmas “gift.”
Evangeline “Evie” Statler will celebrate her first holiday at home with mom and dad after she only had about a 50% chance at survival when she was delivered at a Cape Girardeau hospital on March 24 – about four months before her mid-July due date – and weighing just 14 ounces, according to reports.
“For the timing to line up with Christmas, it’s like, symbolic, almost like, yeah, she is our gift,” the newborn’s father, Dylan Statler told KSDK after Evie was released Monday.
Evie arrived prematurely after mother Maddie Statler, 27, explained she woke up with back pain, and later that day started having contractions.
After she had some bleeding, she went to the hospital, ABC’s “Good Morning America” reported.
She received medications to stop the preterm labor, but the bleeding continued during her stay at the hospital. Maddie was hemorrhaging from placental abruption, a serious pregnancy complication, which led Evie to be born by C-section.
“It was definitely scary,” said Maddie in a news release cited by People.
“We didn’t know if we both would make it or not and didn’t know what would really happen. She was so tiny, like a little baby bird.”
Doctors told the couple their new daughter had less than a 50% chance of survival in what Dylan, 30, called a “nightmare scenario.”
“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,” he told ABC.
Evie was later transferred to St. Louis Children’s Hospital in July for specialized care as she still fought for survival and was treated for complications including high blood pressure in the arteries of her lungs, ABC reported.
“We anticipated a very long stay,” Dr. Melissa Riley, who oversaw her care, told ABC.
“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.'”
