Julia and John Thompson were excited to finally get pregnant after years of trying — but the excitement slipped into fear when they realized their little one was measuring pretty small
The couple tells PEOPLE about their baby daughter Eloise’s incredible journey of survival after being born weighing only 14 oz.
After spending almost five months in the hospital, Eloise is now back home and thriving
Julia and John Thompson were over the moon when they learned they were expecting a baby. But their excitement turned into panic when they discovered their little one was going to be born much earlier than anticipated.
After getting married four years ago, the Massachusetts-based couple had been trying to get pregnant for about three years. They’d gone through in vitro fertilization (IVF) and, unfortunately, experienced a few losses before they finally got pregnant with their baby daughter Eloise.
“We were ecstatic, but we’d had some losses prior to her,” Julia tells PEOPLE. “So I think we were also a little reserved.”
Julia’s pregnancy wasn’t easy. Eloise gave them a scare at around five weeks when Julia had a hemorrhage, and they thought they’d lost her. And at about 18 weeks during her anatomy scan, Eloise was measuring small, and the doctors became concerned that Julia was developing preeclampsia.
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Julia Thompson
Baby Eloise
“Just as soon as they said she’s measuring small…we knew the exact date of conception because she was an IVF baby, so it wasn’t like they could say, ‘Oh, maybe we just got the due date wrong,’ ” Julia explains. “I was just starting to be like, ‘Okay, we’re pregnant, we’re having a baby. Everything’s okay.’ And then it was like, ‘Oh, just kidding. Now we’re going to throw a little hurdle in.'”
After the scan, Julia and John began to get stressed. They started getting scans every week, and Eloise wasn’t growing at the rate she should’ve been. It was at that point that the doctors told Julia she’d most likely deliver early.
Julia Thompson
Baby Eloise (left) and John and Julia Thompson with Eloise (right)
Throughout the next few weeks of her pregnancy, Julia says she felt totally normal. They went to Bermuda for a relaxing babymoon and had a doctor’s appointment once they’d returned home. Although everything was fine during that appointment, a few days later, Julia realized she hadn’t urinated at all that day.
She called her OB, who told her to check her blood pressure, which ended up measuring extremely high. Her OB told her to get herself looked at in the hospital, so Julia and John ended up driving to the triage unit.
Julia Thompson
Eloise
“Pretty much within half an hour of being in triage, the OB came in and she was like, ‘You might be having your baby now,’ ” Julia says. “And I almost laughed because I was like, ‘I’m 23 weeks pregnant. That’s funny. I have a lot more time to go.'”
But the doctor was serious — Julia’s blood pressure was way too high. The mom-to-be also had to transfer hospitals, since the one she was at didn’t have the capabilities to take care of a baby that small. Julia was started on a magnesium drip and taken to Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH).
“I was diagnosed with severe early preeclampsia and from there it was basically myself and Eloise [that] had to be monitored around the clock to find out at what point it was too dangerous for me to stay pregnant with her anymore,” says Julia. “They wanted to make sure that she was safe. We were doing these fetal non-stress tests twice a day, and then they were checking my blood pressure.”
It was a waiting game for the next 10 days until doctors decided it was no longer safe for Eloise to be in utero. At that point, Julia was only 23 weeks pregnant — just a few weeks shy of 28 weeks, when doctors felt more comfortable taking Eloise out early.
“But we were so close and she was so small that they truly felt that every day mattered to try and get a little bit further along,” Julia says. “And those 10 days I went from, I think 23 and five maybe to 25 and two [weeks pregnant], I think I was when I finally delivered. And I really believe that those 10 days are the reason why we have a healthy, beautiful baby here now.”
Julia Thompson
Baby Eloise
During those 10 days, doctors came up with a game plan for when Eloise was finally born. Dr. Rodica Turcu, who led the neonatal intensive care team, tells PEOPLE that there were a number of special accommodations taken to ensure Eloise would have the best chance of survival.
“All high-risk pregnancies like Julia’s are followed by special OB physicians, specialized in maternal-fetal medicine (MFM),” Dr. Turcu explains. “When the fetus reaches a gestational age that is compatible with life outside the womb (currently that age is as early as 22 weeks, Eloise was born at 25 weeks but with the weight of a 22 week baby), neonatology joins the team and start preparations for the baby’s delivery, and the long and hard hospital stay.”
Dr. Turcu says the goal is always to try and prolong the pregnancy for as long as possible, but balancing the risks and benefits for the mother and the baby can be difficult. Oftentimes, the delivery can happen in the middle of the night, and both teams must be available around the clock.
“The team that attends the delivery of any premature and very small baby like Eloise is specially trained for neonatal resuscitation,” she continues. “The OB/MFM team is performing the actual delivery (caesarean section is common when delivering a very small baby) and the neonatology team is responsible for the newborn’s resuscitation.”
Once the baby is in stable condition, they’re transported in a transport incubator, connected to a transport ventilator, to the NICU. The delivery and resuscitation for Eloise went smoothly, and she was moved from the delivery room to the NICU.
Julia Thompson
Eloise and her team
For John and Julia, the delivery was pretty brutal. John wasn’t allowed in the delivery room and waited anxiously to hear that everything had gone smoothly.
“It was awful,” John recalls. “The 10 days leading up to all this was like we weren’t sleeping at all. Who knows what we were eating? Hospital food. I mean, we were so exhausted by that point.”
“I did get nervous because it was taking a bit. They told me it was going to be like 30 minutes, and then it kept going, and then finally the nurse came and she was like, ‘We got to go. We’re ready,’ ” he remembers. “It was hard. I didn’t know what to see. I guess they did tell me these things, but I kind of forgot. She was in a medical-grade cellophane bag to maintain her temperature. It’s like a tiny baby.”
Eloise was intubated, which John says was tough to see as a parent. He was also crying a lot, but the staff at MGH made sure he was alright. “They took care of John as much as they took care of me,” says Julia.
Their baby daughter was whisked away to the NICU while Julia recovered from delivery. She had flu-like symptoms from being on a magnesium drip and was healing from her C-section, so she wasn’t able to see her daughter until the following afternoon. But John was able to go the same day Eloise was born and see their little one.
“Even that was kind of tough to see all the machines and monitors, and that was the first time we experienced the beeping. It’s the constant beeping that you hear in your head, even when you leave the hospital,” John says. “I got to touch her. I actually have a picture. I was holding her tiny, tiny hand.”
Julia Thompson
Eloise
The two particularly liked a feature of the NICU called the AngelEye, which was a camera that would allow them to see their daughter whenever they wanted.
“John and I could pull it up and see. She’s just lying there snoozing,” Julia remembers. “But sometimes the nurse would leave a little note next to her saying, ‘I was such a good girl last night,’ or something like that.”
“I was still inpatient, struggling with my blood pressure for almost a week after she came out. So they would coordinate with the nurses on the floor that I was on, ‘Hey, can you come down and grab her?’ ” she continues. “And they definitely cared about all of us, which was just so sweet. And they noticed if we weren’t feeling as great, maybe we hadn’t gotten any sleep, they’d recommend going and taking a break.”
“They really got to know us very well. There were many days, nights, episodes of us crying at [Eloise’s] bedside with certain providers and nurses and RTs and everyone that we would all just get…it was a lot. It was definitely a lot. But they were such a good community.”
Eloise ended up spending 106 days in the NICU. Once she graduated from there, she spent a month and a half in the special care unit before she was able to go home. In total, she was hospitalized for about five months.
There were a few benchmarks Eloise had to hit before she was able to go home. According to Dr. Turcu, she needed to be off of significant respiratory support, and her feeding had to increase. Initially, Eloise was fed through special IVs, but eventually graduated to an N-trainer, an innovation at the hospital that is designed to assess infants’ suck strength and rhythmicity, and train them to develop a strong suck pattern.
Julia Thompson
Eloise
Eloise was the first baby at MGH who benefited from this special technology. Although she was discharged with both her feeding tube in place and on oxygen, she had made significant strides.
Alongside the more clinical benchmarks, John and Julia also celebrated the little moments that happened throughout their five months of being at the hospital.
“We set our own little benchmark,” John says. “The benchmarks were first times doing things because it was so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day of the NICU life that we tried to do fun things with her.”
“They would dress her up in stuff for St. Patrick’s Day. And there were different photo shoots that the hospital would do, but we had stuff around the holidays,” he continues. “We had the day that she turned one kilogram, we had a sign and we did something.”
On the day they were finally able to go home, John and Julia say they were so excited but also in “utter, utter panic.”
Julia explains that they were so scared to purchase anything during Eloise’s stay at the hospital, in fear that they would jinx their daughter’s growth. She says she “flat out refused” to prepare their house at all.
Julia Thompson
Eloise
Once they were two weeks away from being discharged, the couple, who had been living part-time in an apartment by the hospital, went back to their house and began making preparations. Julia says it was “surreal” to be away from Eloise and getting everything ready for her to join them at home.
“And in disbelief, especially since [for the] four or five months we lived at the hospital, I couldn’t really fathom another life with Eloise outside of the walls of the hospital,” Julia explains. “I got used to having all these people around us constantly, trusting these people to take the best care of Eloise. And then I was just panicked that I was like, ‘We’re going to go home, and it’s just going to be us? We’re not qualified.'”
In the first few weeks of Eloise being home, John and Julia returned to the hospital for many different appointments.
“When we first got discharged, I think within seven days of discharge, we were back at MGH like three times, four times maybe, because at that time she was home on oxygen with the feeding tube,” Julia says, adding that they had to see many different doctors. “So in the beginning, we were there at least once, if not twice, every week.”
Now, they’ve been able to space out those visits as Eloise gets stronger and stronger. “It’s driving into the city once a month or once every other month now,” says Julia.
At just over 13 pounds now and 9 months old, Eloise is thriving. She’s rolled over and is starting to eat purees and peanut butter. She’s sleeping through the night, which Julia says has been “wonderful.”
“We’re very thankful. We’re very fortunate,” Julia says. “MGH, they’re the reason why we are a family. They gave us 10 extra days of pregnancy and our daughter and I’m forever indebted to [them], there are too many of them to name. But every single person there really helped, and they feel like family.”
“There were times when we had difficult conversations about Eloise. They were saying she’d probably need to have a tracheostomy, or basically a permanent breathing tube, at least for a couple of years,” she continues.
“And she’s just surpassed all of these odds. She’s done more than anyone could have expected. She’s a little trooper.”
