Brittany Gipson had to wait nearly a week after giving birth to be reunited with her son.
She had to wait even longer before she could hold him.
Now a mother of three, Gipson was diagnosed with placenta previa — a condition where the placenta attaches too low in the uterus. Gipson was warned that if she started bleeding, she needed to seek immediate medical attention.
Back in December, Gipson began bleeding just 24 weeks into her pregnancy.
“It was scary,” she said. “I called my mom first and then she handled the rest.”
Within minutes, the Shelby Fire Department arrived to transport Gipson to OhioHealth Shelby Hospital, where she was stabilized through multiple blood transfusions. One firefighter stuck behind to comfort Gipson’s two other children.
Gipson was then rushed to OhioHealth Mansfield Hospital. Her son, Jaxson Gipson, entered the world within 10 minutes of arriving at the facility — born at 1 pound, 11 ounces and less than 13 inches long.
Now nine months old, Jaxson Gipson is growing and gaining weight with assistance from a feeding tube as he approaches his first birthday.
“It feels great. It’s a miracle, that he’s here,” the Shelby mother said.
Jaxson’s journey
After delivering her son, Gipson spent time recovering in the ICU. Her son had a long stretch in the NICU — about 75 miles from Shelby. His journey included being put on a ventilator, then a CPAP, and now an oxygen and feeding tube.
Gipson said her mother, Brandi Jacobs, has been by her side every step of the way.
“She’s (Jacobs) like my best friend,” she said. “If I call her, she’ll help me.”
When she found out her grandson had made it through delivery in December, Jacobs said tears started flowing. She drove her daughter to Columbus to meet the newborn for the first time.
The mother and daughter made trips to Columbus about three to four times per week.
“It was a long journey,” Jacobs said. “I didn’t think it was ever going to come to where he could come home.”
But now that Jaxson Gipson is home and continuing to make progress, his grandmother is not taking a moment for granted.
“Me and him have a great relationship,” she said.
‘It’s great to know the outcome,’ says Shelby firefighter
On a normal day, Gipson would have likely been flown by helicopter to a Level Three maternity center — somewhere like Riverside Methodist Hospital in Columbus — after being stabilized at the Shelby hospital.
But due to December weather conditions, that was not a possibility. Transporting Gipson to OhioHealth Mansfield was the best option available.
“Typically, with emergent calls like that, our preference is just to go directly to Mansfield — to a trauma center where a hospital is more capable of handling situations like that,” said Shelby firefighter Calvin Redden.
“But given the situation, the priority was to get to a hospital, period, as fast as we could.”
Redden’s crew stuck around at OhioHealth Shelby from the time they dropped Gipson off until the decision was made that they would need to be the ones to get her to Mansfield.
The opportunity to see Gipson and her son months after the situation is something Redden said he’s grateful for.
“It’s great to know the outcome and to know what you did were the correct actions,” he said. “A lot of times, we don’t know. We drop the patient off and we never hear from them again and don’t hear any outcomes.
“It’s really beneficial and it makes you feel better about what you’re doing because it takes the guess work out of, ‘Did I make the right calls? Did I do everything I should have done on that call?'”
Each person made a difference
Dr. Catherine Davis, a pediatric hospitalist at OhioHealth Mansfield, was part of the extensive medical team waiting for Gipson upon her arrival at the Mansfield hospital.
Davis is employed by Nationwide Children’s Hospital and stationed at OhioHealth Mansfield as part of a partnership to provide high-level care.
She remembers receiving the call in December that Gipson would be arriving in need of an emergency cesarean section. Davis didn’t hesitate to begin assembling a team, along with a care plan for the baby after delivery — all while coordinating via phone with Nationwide in Columbus.
“When the baby came out he wasn’t breathing. He did have a heartbeat but it was below normal range, so we did what we needed to do to stabilize him,” Davis said.
A breathing tube was put in place to help stabilize his oxygen levels and heart rate. Jaxson Gipson was closely monitored in the special care nursery until he was transported to Columbus.
“It wasn’t just one individual person who made a difference for Jaxson’s success. It was every single person who was involved,” Davis said.
She said no matter the experience level, it’s difficult to overcome feeling anxious when medical situations like this arise.
“The way I went about it is, ‘This is not a patient. This is someone’s baby. This is someone’s family member and I’m going to do everything that I possibly can to make sure that this goes well.'”