Nursing Testimonial
In a few days, we'll be bringing our four month old to Hoag so she can meet the nurse that saved her life. The nurse's name is Tien Chau, and we call her our baby's angel.
On May 4th around 9:00 p.m., we decided to go to the hospital to have the baby's heartbeat checked. I hadn't felt her move that day, so we felt we needed to make sure everything was okay. We were immediately assigned Tien as a nurse, and she put us at ease right away. She checked the heartbeat and it was strong. She was very friendly and jovial, and we assumed nothing was wrong.
We were ready to go home and were surprised when Tien seemed to be stalling. She kept making excuses for us to stay longer and longer, even though the baby's heartbeat remained strong. She ended up ordering an ultrasound for us, then told me I needed to stay overnight. I couldn't understand why, especially since Tien really hadn't found anything wrong, but of course we went with her recommendation. I was moved to a different floor and went to sleep. A couple hours later, I was woken up and told the baby was not doing well and needed to come out immediately.
While I was asleep, my placenta and uterus separated and our precious baby was losing the nutrients she needed to stay alive. Very early in the morning on May 5th, our little Breanna Rose made her grand entrance into the world. The doctor who delivered her said she had lost quite a bit of blood (her hemoglobin count was two) and told us, "It's a good thing you were in the hospital." Breanna Rose was born at 31 weeks and weighed a little over three pounds.
Tien came to my bedside shortly after she was born and told me she had a gut feeling from the moment we walked in that something was seriously wrong with the baby. She made a promise to herself that she wouldn't let us leave until she found out what it was. She watched over us like a hawk, and when she began seeing the baby's heartbeat fluctuate drastically in the wee hours of the morning, she was ready to move mountains to ensure our baby's life was protected.
Breanna spent six weeks in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU) at Children's Hospital of Orange County (CHOC) and had lots of ups and downs, but today she is a perfectly healthy (and feisty!) little girl. Every day we thank God for her, and we so often think of Tien. When Tien "should" have sent us home, her intuition as a nurse instructed her to do the best thing for our baby. Because she cared about us as if we were her own family, we have a beautiful little girl.
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