Julia, pictured here with her father, is now a happy, healthy toddler.

TANYA'S STORY
To go order: 400 bottles of milk

Milk Bank experts help mother, daughter bond despite six-month hospital stay

Two years later, Tanya Faulk still can’t talk about her daughter Julia’s dramatic birth without getting teary.

In 2005, when she was 25 weeks pregnant, Tanya had to evacuate her home near Beaumont because Hurricane Rita was on the way. She moved in with her sister in Houston, and her husband Paul was working offshore.

Shortly after she got to Houston, Tanya began having contractions and rushed to a suburban hospital. The doctors there weren’t able to stop the contractions and didn’t offer much hope for her baby’s life.

A little while later, Julia was delivered and pronounced dead. While Tanya was in recovery, Julia was wrapped and placed in another room because doctors felt there nothing could be done to save her.

But 45 minutes later, Julia began kicking and crying -- much to everyone’s surprise and delight.

“The next thing I know, Texas Children's Kangaroo Crew® is coming in,” Tanya said. “When I saw them, I knew everything was going to be all right.”

Kangaroo Crew drove Julia to Texas Children's and placed her in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). She weighed 1 pound, 5 oz. and was 12 ¼” long.

As Julia settled into her NICU surroundings, Tanya began learning from the hospital's lactation experts.

“Julia had my breast milk from day seven," Tanya said. "I pumped the entire time. When Julia was ready to nurse rather than be fed through a tube, she latched on right away because of what they taught me. All their tips really worked.”

Julia's dramatic birth and Tanya's successful breastfeeding story are even more remarkable because Tanya is a breast cancer survivor, and only one of her breasts produced milk. She had eight miscarriages before giving birth to Julia.

“Because of my history, it was really important to me to breastfeed,” she said. “The lactation experts in the Mother's Own Milk Bank got me a pump, counseled me and really went above and beyond. No matter what time of the day or night, they made me feel welcome.”

Today, Julia is a happy, healthy 2-year-old. She’s developmentally on target in all areas except speech, where she lags slightly behind other children her age.

“She’s perfect in every way,” Tanya said. “My husband and I prayed for her for such a long time, and we were blessed to have the Texas Children’s experts help us. I really believe those people have a calling, and they’re really pulling for all the children in their care.”