Miracle baby comes home

BY Ariana Shah

Jennifer and Christopher O’Neill Carson have had a really stressful year…and it’s more than a pandemic that they have had to deal with. On New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day, their twins were born a full four months early. Wyatt weighed in at only 1 lb, 4 oz and twin Waylon was born at 1 lb., 5 oz.

Little Waylon died a day after the emergency C Section that delivered the twins, but miraculously, Wyatt has pulled through and he came home Monday to his Canyon Lake home weighing 8 pounds.

Wyatt spent 138 days in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit at Kaiser San Diego Medical Center. Jennifer and Christopher pretty much lived at San Diego’s Ronald McDonald House, a lodging center that supports parents whose children are in the hospital. The couple also bounced back and forth from their home in Canyon Lake to the NICU since the first of the year to check on their older children.

Baby Wyatt Carson “graduates” from the Kaiser San Diego Medical Center NICU after spending his whole life of four and half months there. He came home to Canyon Lake on Monday. Photo by Jennifer Carson.

“The community of Canyon Lake has been just so kind to us during this hectic time,” Jennifer said. “We were gifted with meals, our neighbors kept an eye on our older children and one of our neighbors even trimmed our trees. We are just so grateful for our little community.”

The due date for the twins was April 30/May 1. When the C Section was performed, it appeared there was little hope of survival. They were born at only 22 weeks, 6 days gestation. The cutoff for a hospital to perform life-saving procedures is 23 weeks. Regardless, those at Kaiser San Diego worked tirelessly to save the babies.

“After losing Waylon, it really put life into perspective for me,” Jennifer said. “Life is so precious and important. My husband had commented that the NICU is the most amazing place you never want to visit. The hospital staff and nurses were just so accommodating to our needs, which we are so grateful for.”

Wyatt’s road to becoming strong enough to survive and to eventually leave the hospital was full of hurdles and procedures. One such procedure was a scheduled open-heart surgery to repair a heart murmur. The surgery would be dangerous and life threatening.

Baby Wyatt Carson weighed a mere 1 lb., 4 oz. at birth as shown here shortly after delivery via C Section on New Year’s Eve. Photo by Jennifer Carson.

“The doctor warned us that surgery would be complicated, and if his murmur did not close on its own, they would have to perform the surgery,” Jennifer said. “Wyatt’s skin was so thin and fragile that it was comparable to tissue paper. Miraculously, the heart murmur closed on its own just in time. The surgery wasn’t necessary. Wyatt is our miracle baby.”

The Carsons were excited to learn last year that they were expecting again and that Jennifer was pregnant with twins.

“Christopher and I really wanted to try and have children again,” Jennifer said. “When we found out I was going to have twins, we were both so ecstatic.”

Little did they know the pregnancy would be so short and such massive complications would result. However, with Wyatt’s health experiencing such improvement and his weight all the way up to 8 pounds, the Carson family is thrilled to have their baby home.

The time in San Diego overseeing Wyatt’s care has been a financial drain and friends have set up a Go Fund Me to help them through hospital bills, treatments, mortgage and other bills. Both have had to take unpaid leave from their jobs during this time.

Their Go Fund Me Goal is very close to being met and is labeled “The Carson’s Crusade from Heartbreak to Hope.”

“We are overwhelmed with the immense feeling of humble gratitude for every thought, prayer or penny we have been given,” Christopher said. “The love and support we are receiving are the rays of hope piercing through the clouds that has been over us these past days. The clouds will pass, but the humble gratitude for all the love we have been shown will never dissipate. We couldn’t pay it back in 10 lives, but we will pay it forward. RIP Waylon. Long live Wyatt.”