Just in time for Mother’s Day, Arlington preemie finally comes home

Crystal Russell wasn’t sure if she and her 4  1/2 -month-old son, Wyatt, would be taking trips out of the house on Sunday. The Mother’s Day brunches may have to wait.

They’ve been on quite a journey already.

Russell and her husband, Christopher, were visiting relatives in North Dakota with their three teenage sons a few days before Christmas. That’s when Crystal Russell, then almost 24 weeks pregnant, suffered a complication called placental abruption. A few days later, Wyatt was born in a Bismarck, N.D., hospital weighing just 1 pound, 5 ounces.

Mother and son returned to Fort Worth via a Cook Children’s Medical Center Teddy Bear Transport flight Feb. 4, after spending more than a month in North Dakota. On May 1, Wyatt was finally released from Cook Children’s and returned to the Russells’ home in east Arlington. The day also happened to be the 10th anniversary of when Crystal and Christopher Russell became a couple.

“It was the best anniversary present ever,” Crystal Russell said. “I got to bring my son home.”

She heaps praise on the doctors and nurses in North Dakota and Fort Worth who helped transform the tiny “micropreemie,” the term for babies born at less than 26 weeks gestation, into the 9-pound, 5-ounce boy she brought home. Wyatt is now 19  1/4 inches long, 7 inches longer than when he was born.

“He’s a little short for his age, but I’m not concerned,” said Crystal Russell.

The family has had much bigger worries to contend with. When Wyatt was born, doctors gave him a 50 percent chance of survival. Challenges continued, even as his odds improved and he gained strength.

“It’s a roller coaster,” said Christopher Russell, who returned to Texas on New Year’s Day with his three stepsons while Crystal and Wyatt remained in North Dakota. “We’d have a good week and I’d think, ‘Oh, this is going to be easy,’ and then one thing would happen and we’d go back to the beginning.”

Crystal Russell said watching Wyatt’s due date, April 15, come and go without him home was particularly tough. Originally, doctors had worried that feeding issues might keep him in Cook Children’s until at least May 15. Since birth, Wyatt needed a tube through his throat or nose to help with his eating. There was talk of sending him home with a gastrostomy button, or G-button, a tube inserted in the abdomen to administer supplemental feeding. Then a test showed that thickening up his baby formula would do the trick. The feeding tube was out for good April 28.

Crystal Russell said Wyatt is already hitting milestones like holding his head up. Doctors expect him to be caught up developmentally by age 1. His only medications are vitamin D and a special baby formula for preemies.

Since coming home, Wyatt eats every three hours, and the family has a swirl of cords to navigate through as they hold him. He wears heart rate and oxygen monitors and still gets a very small amount of oxygen through a nose cannula. Crystal Russell is hopeful the machines won’t be needed much longer.

A nurse comes in three times a week to check on Wyatt, but, for the most part, the family is providing all his care. After months of waiting, his mother is just fine with that.

“He’s 100 percent mine now,” Crystal Russell said.

This story was originally published May 8, 2016 at 5:39 AM with the headline "Just in time for Mother’s Day, Arlington preemie finally comes home."