Family benefits from transport team after sudden birth

RUSTON, LA (KSLA) - Megan Garbarino will spend the next several days preparing her 9-month-old son, Graham, for his third surgery. The bubbly 17 pound baby will have corrective eye surgery that's a result of a complication from his birth, which came much sooner than the family expected.

"I'd gotten up early to get lunch ready and everything ready to get in the car for school that day and I thought 'these aren't Braxton Hicks contractions,'" said Megan Garbarino, mom of Graham. "Something was going on."

Megan Garbarino said she did all the things she had learned to stop the contractions, but it wasn't working. She called her husband, James, then rushed to the hospital but there was no stopping Graham's arrival.

"He was transverse which meant he was sideways in my stomach and they said it wasn't safe to try to turn him so we had an emergency C-section," explained Megan Garbarino.

Graham was born 10 weeks early. He weighed just 4 pounds, one ounce and he needed immediate medical attention.

"Because Ruston is a small town they, don't have that level of NICU to take care of a baby born at that gestation. We hadn't researched NICU's. The nurses there recommended CHRISTUS Highland. So we said OK, go there," said Garbarino.

Graham was airlifted to CHRISTUS Highland's NICU with the help of the transport team funded by the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals. The team was in Ruston moments after Graham was born and he was flown to Shreveport for emergency care.

"It wasn't until the next week until he started to have more trouble and we knew that it was going to be maybe a little harder road then just a premature delivery," said James Garbarino.

Graham suffered from a brain bleed that caused several seizures days after his birth. The diagnosis didn't come with an outline of long-term effects, but the unknown hasn't weakened the family's strong faith.

"God would take care of us and the staff at the hospital knew what they were doing and that we were in the right hands," said James Garbarino.

Sponsored by CHRISTUS Health Shreveport-Bossier, Your Children's Miracle Network Hospital.

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