Kaliah Dailynn Holly Jeffery, by Chelsey Charles

Unlike most teenage pregnancies mine was no accident; my sweet baby girl was planned. I found out I was pregnant when I was about 4 weeks along. My boyfriend,Tanner, and I were ecstatic. The next 20 weeks I did what any expecting mother would do – I shopped and planned and set up our room, making sure everything would be ready and perfect.

Kaliah Dailynn Holly Jeffery was born on July 20, 2011. When I first held her, my entire life changed at that moment. Gazing at me with her big brown bright eyes, as I touched her thick brown hair, I couldn’t put her down. She was absolutely gorgeous.

In the hospital, the doctor noticed I had a slight cough. I told her I’d had it for about a week. That night, my cough started to get worse. Still, nobody seemed too concerned about it. The doctors thought I was probably tired after labor. I was asked if I wanted to get the Tdap vaccine before I left the hospital. I said yes. I hadn’t gotten the vaccine in 5 years and I needed it for school when I was pregnant, but they wanted to wait till after I gave birth. They gave me the shot the next day and sent me and my perfect little family home.

The next nine days everything was going pretty great. I still had my cough but it hadn’t gotten any worse. When Kaliah was about 10 days old I heard her sneeze. Like any new mother, I panicked. I started searching the Internet on symptoms of newborn colds. At first nothing caught my eye until I saw whooping cough “extremely dangerous for newborns.” The next day my cough sounded worse and I also heard Kaliah cough a few times. So, I took my baby to the walk-in clinic and told them that I thought we had whooping cough.

The doctor asked about our symptoms. Then, he told me we “didn’t have the symptoms of whooping cough and that we appeared fine.” I explained to him about how I researched pertussis and that it makes you appear fine until you’re having a coughing spell. He finally agreed to test us, even though he said they had never tested a baby so young before.

Two days later I got a phone call from the health department telling me that Kaliah and I were both positive for pertussis. I was in utter shock. How could this happen? The next day her cough got worse, she wasn’t keeping much food down, and she also looked a little blue around her eyes. We went to the emergency room. They told us we should stay in the hospital overnight so they could observe her.

I thought we were just there for the night, but Kaliah wasn’t getting better. She wasn’t eating much, and when she did eat she would cough so hard she would throw up. They had to keep upping her dosage of oxygen. She was getting weaker. On day3 in the hospital the doctors decided to put her on a feeding tube. I would pump breast milk and they would put her on a continuous drip.

On day 5 we had our first big scare, she stopped breathing. Tons of doctors and nurses rushed in to help her. The doctors explained that it was time to put her on a ventilator.

They let me and Tanner’s mom go into the room. We had to wear gowns, masks, and gloves to make sure she wouldn’t catch anything else. Kaliah was in an incubator with wires on her, an IV in her wrist, and a ventilator tube in her mouth. It was so heartbreaking to see my little baby girl in so much pain. The doctors told me to go home for the night to get some rest. Well, later that night my phone rang. The doctor started telling me Kaliah’s infection was taking over her blood cells.

The next morning Kaliah looked so puffy. She could no longer open her eyes and they had her on pain medications. The doctors told us we could hold her hand or her foot and that we should talk to her. I grabbed her hand and Tanner touched her foot and we told her that we loved her. We both stood there and cried.

I thought about how just a week ago she was healthy as can be. All of a sudden, Kaliah started twitching. We were watching our 3 ½ week old baby have a seizure. Tanner and I were so scared we didn’t know what was going to happen. They moved her that night to Children’s Hospital.

The next morning a doctor told us she had yet another seizure that had lasted six minutes. They had done a blood transfusion and a spinal tap. The doctor brought up the ECMO machine and told me that if things got worse that it was our last option. This was the first time anyone had ever even brought up the fact that Kaliah might not make it!

That was the very moment I started to shut everyone around me out, I didn’t believe it. “Not make it?” There was no way. This lady is crazy. We called our families. Within an hour everyone was there.

As the doctors were hooking Kaliah up to do a brain scan they started to panic – not because of her brain, but because she had a very low oxygen level. Her heart and lungs were working too hard. Everything was getting worse fast. Doctors again explained the ECMO machine. It would pump blood out of her body into a machine, put oxygen in the blood, and pump the blood back into her body. Plain and simple it was life support, our very last option.

After 3 hours of surgery to implant the ECMO machine, I remember going back in that room to see her. I could barely recognize her. My little girl was swollen everywhere. Her eyes were more puffy then before, she felt like her skin was tight and full, she was also really warm. There were two tubes inserted by her neck and right shoulder.

Still, I knew my baby would pull through, she had to. Now that she was on life support, she didn’t have to do any work. She will gain her strength back. My sister and I stayed in the hospital that night.

The next morning the doctor told us “last night there were some complications with the ECMO machine. Her body is rejecting all the medication. Everything we’re putting in her veins is leaking out into her body. That’s why she’s so swollen. It’s part of the disease (pertussis). Her chances of survival at this point aren’t good at all.” I began to cry and I held her hand for a long time.

On day 9 at the hospital, our entire families visited. Kaliah’s body was turning purple from all the blood and medicines leaking from her veins. It was so hard to see her that way. I tried my hardest to stay strong for her. I kept telling her I loved her, that everything was going to be alright.

We sat in the waiting room for a long time praying she would make it. Four doctors came out to talk to us; they pulled all of us into a room. I remember exactly what they said. “We have all been working very hard on Kaliah and the machine just keeps cutting out. It’s just not working anymore. There is nothing more we can do to help her, she’s too sick. We are so very sorry.”  Everyone in the room was crying including all the doctors.

The doctors brought our whole family back into Kaliah’s room so we could say our final goodbyes. They sat me and Tanner down on a couch they placed Kaliah in my arms, for the last time. She wore striped pajamas with a monkey on the front; she was absolutely beautiful.

I held my sweet baby in my arms, with Tanner beside me; we held her hands. I kissed her on the forehead and told her I loved her so much and she wouldn’t have to fight anymore. Tanner kissed her on the hand and told her he loved her. A few moments later we were doing the hardest thing I think I will ever have to do in my entire life. We watched the doctor take her off life support. Kaliah gasped for breath. We sat there and watched our little girl go. The doctor came in and checked for a heart rate and said “I’m sorry she’s gone.” He then took her out of my arms. Tanner and I walked out into the waiting room after saying goodbye to our 27 day-old baby girl.

I keep telling myself that god gave me Kaliah for a reason, even if I couldn’t have her forever. I knew that when she passed I would make her live on and share her story to save other babies from this horrible disease. I would not let her die for no reason. She was too beautiful for the earth.

I am doing my best to educate the world by telling Kaliah’s story. Pertussis (whooping cough) is very dangerous for infants because they can’t be vaccinated until they are 8 weeks old. That means newborns don’t have a fighting chance. The best way to keep the babies safe is to get vaccinated. The more people vaccinated the better it will be. If you are against vaccination or just aren’t vaccinated I really hope my little girl’s story changes your mind. Whooping cough spreads very quickly. To protect babies everywhere please get vaccinated. Thank you.

Chelsey Charles

To learn more, visit http://kennethaskorner.weebly.com/.

Thanks to everyone for sharing Kaliah’s Story. You are helping to raise awareness and make a difference. If you would like to comment or offer support to the family, please visit Shot by Shot on Facebook.

Learn more about pertussis.

Landon Carter Dube was born December 8, 2009 at 5:08 P.M. by cesarean section. Carter, or “Carterbug,” was born breach and had a head full of red hair; he was the spitting image of his daddy.

On Tuesday, January 19, 2010, I took Carter to the doctor’s office. Carter was not himself; he had a fever of 100.1 and was cranky and nothing seemed to help. Daryl (my husband) and I were joking about how over-protective we were acting and how it was probably just a little cold.

The nurse we saw was immediately concerned with Carter’s breathing rate. The next thing I knew, we were in an ambulance, heading to Levine’s Children’s Hospital in Charlotte, North Carolina.

We were admitted for observation. Doctors came in and asked a lot of questions over and over again. Everyone had to wear a mask and a gown because they were unsure as to what was wrong with Carter. Carter was finally diagnosed with pertussis.

Over the next two days, Carter had to be put on nasal oxygen, was taken for chest x-rays and had his nose and lungs suctioned; they even beat his back to loosen up his lungs. At first he seemed to be stabilizing and the doctors even thought if his progress continued he would be able to go home as early as Saturday morning.

But, that Friday Carter started coughing again, lost his breath, and turned blue. I totally panicked; if my husband would not have been there, I don’t know what would have happened. I just froze in my steps.

The doctors sent Carter to the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit. Daryl and I would take shifts staying up with Carter; we never wanted him to be alone and not see one of us there with him. By early the next morning Carter was put on a respiratory machine. He had become fussy and inconsolable, which caused him to struggle even more when he breathed. We didn’t know it at the time, but that was the last time we saw our Carterbug awake.

Later on Sunday, Carter was put on an Oscillator because his fragile body wasn’t strong enough to handle the respiratory machine. And, on Tuesday evening, surgeons implanted an ECMO (heart and lung bypass machine) in Carter, as a last resort.  We made arrangements for Zach, Carter’s 10 year old brother, to come and see Carter before the procedure was done.

After the procedure, I was not prepared for what I saw when I walked back to his room. My sweet baby boy had huge tubes in the sides of his neck and technicians monitoring the blood pumping in and out of them. His urinary system had shut down forcing his tiny body to swell to nearly twice its size. It was like a bad dream where we just couldn’t wake up.

On Thursday, January 28, after 9 days in the hospital, the doctors offered the last available medicine they hoped would treat Carter’s infection. They gave him the medicine around 3:30 in the afternoon. A half an hour later, the doctor called us in to say good bye. Carter had no more blood pressure reading. His kidneys had completely shut down. His poor little body just couldn’t fight off the pertussis.

I held his hand, the only thing I could touch that wasn’t wired to a machine, and told him that I loved him very much. I told him how brave he was and how he had fought a great fight, but if he was tired and wanted to go to heaven, he should go. I told him that momma and daddy would miss him, but we would see him again one day. Carter showed us that he was ready to go to heaven and not hurt anymore. At 5:06 that evening, Carter passed away.

After losing our baby, my husband and I became so consumed with the grief that is was hard to function—let alone take care of our then 10-yr old who still needed a set of parents.

We miss Carter every day and my heart will always have a little hole that can never be filled. We decided that one way to honor his short time on the earth was to share his story around the world. And it does truly amaze me the lives his story has touched. Most of all, we hope this helps other parents avoid the awful grief and loss we had to endure.

Since losing Carter we have been blessed with another child, a precious baby girl named Brennan Claire, now 10 months old.  We made sure that everyone who wanted to have any contact with Brennan got a Tdap booster. That’s all we want for any baby, a fair chance at a healthy start in life.

Landon Carter contracted pertussis when he was 5 weeks old.

Debbie Jo shares a story about a high school teacher who had pertussis.

Audra and her aunt Laura are strong believers in the HPV vaccine, for good reason: Gisel, Audra’s mother and Laura’s older sister, died from cervical cancer at only 38. (Courtesy of ImmunizeBC)

Teen sings about how his friends warned him to get a Tdap shot. (Courtesy of T2X – The Club)