T E X A R K A N A M A G A Z I N E
In the Valley of Vision BY L IBBY WHITE
P regnancy had been particularly sweet for Texarkana natives Jordan and Mitch James, following a struggle with fertility. Months of fear and anguish over the possibility of never becoming parents had turned into a pregnancy marked by gratefulness and pure joy. The couple had finally become pregnant; beyond their wildest dreams, they were being blessed with twins. However, it was the week of Thanksgiving, the time of year when it begins to smell like fall and the air turns crisp, that the joy of a long-awaited pregnancy took an unexpected turn. At just six months (27 weeks) gestation, the pregnancy was cut shockingly short. November is National Prematurity Awareness Month, and Jordan and Mitch gave us a peak into their life-altering moment ten years ago when they were forever changed with the premature birth of their twins, Hank and Margot. “I remember that day, even what it smelled like because it was during the change of the seasons,” Jordan recalled. “Mitch was at work, and I had gone to the grocery store. I had a small amount of blood, so insignificant one might have ignored it.
My due date was February 16 (2012), so we weren’t expecting a delivery for three more months. I called the doctor’s office, and they said we should probably come in to get checked. The monitors detected contractions, and they told me I was in labor. I said, ‘No, I don’t think I am.’ And Dr. Jay (Dr. Sudheer Jayaprabhu) said, ‘You are.’” “We checked into the hospital, and they did all they could to try and stop the labor,” Jordan said. “A magnesium IV is common to stop labor. They tried it. I remember they even tilted my bed in a head down position in an effort for sheer gravity to hold them in. The doctors knew the babies were coming and really wanted me to deliver in Little Rock at UAMS, but there was such a bad storm that night, they couldn’t airlift us. They considered taking us by ambulance, but the roads were flooded. We found out later that I-30 closed that night in Benton with water over the interstate. All the helicopters were grounded, but I was number one on the flight list to go as soon as the storm broke. That never happened. I had them in the middle of the night before we could ever leave.” Mitch, a nurse anesthetist at CHRISTUS
St. Michael, was familiar with emergency procedures on the medical side, but not yet familiar with his role as a dad. While Dr. Jay prepared for emergency surgery, Mitch helped his anesthesia colleague get Jordan to sleep. “I was scared, but went into work mode,” Mitch said. “Being able to help my partner get Jordan to sleep helped give me a focus and a task. I heard the babies cry, and that was the sound I was waiting for.” Twelve hours after being admitted to the hospital, Hank and Margot James were born on November 22, 2011, at CHRISTUS St. Michael. Margot was born first, weighing one pound fifteen ounces, and Hank came second, weighing two pounds six ounces. “They were so tiny,” Mitch remembers. “They could fit in the palm of my hand.” Both babies were intubated in the operating room before being taken upstairs to the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Having been under general anesthesia for the c-section (a practice common with high-risk deliveries) Jordan was not able to see the babies for several hours. “When I woke up after the delivery, they told me the babies were intubated and upstairs in the NICU. They showed me pictures,”
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