Coming full circle

‘Miracle Baby’ meets retired nurse who helped save her life

STEUBENVILLE -- Abbigael "Abby" Balzano is a junior at Franciscan University of Steubenville pursuing her bachelor's degree in nursing.

The daughter of James and Rachel Balzano of Steubenville also is a "miracle baby" who was born Aug. 4, 2000, her entry into the world part of a harrowing 9-minute emergency scenario that could have gone terribly wrong.

Fortunately it didn't.

Little did Balzano realize, though, that in casually sharing her birth story while on an OB clinical rotation with registered nurse Becky Salvino, a part-time nursing instructor at the university, the information would connect the dots and bring Balzano full circle to meet a retired nurse who not only helped save her life, but always wondered what had become of that baby and had prayed for her.

REMEMBERING THAT DAY

Retired nurse Pam Welsh of Follansbee was waiting in a room at the Franciscan University of Steubenville on March 16 with her longtime friend and former nurse colleague Becky Salvino.

Welsh was anxious to meet 20-year-old Abbigael "Abby" Balzano, who was in a class, and Abby's mother, Rachel Balzano, on her way there after work. This was a get-together arranged by Salvino, who has taught at the university for 13 years.

The wait affords the opportunity for Salvino to explain what brings them here and for Welsh to reminisce about her role in the birth of the "miracle baby" before they meet two decades later.

It was February when Salvino was talking to Abby during an OB clinical at Trinity Medical Center West's Birthing Center about Apgar scores, derived from a test given to assess a newborn's health. It checks appearance, pulse, reflexes, muscle tone and respiration. On a score of 1 to 10, 7 and up is good. Low scores are bad.

Abby mentioned when she was born, her Apgar score was a 2 -- very low.

"Oh," said Salvino, who listened with interest as Abby shared some particulars about her birth -- a story that rang oddly familiar.

Abby said her mother was at a prenatal checkup at the doctor's office when her water broke in the women's restroom. With it came a prolapsed umbilical cord, a dire emergency in more ways than one because the fetus's body can put pressure on the cord, cutting off its blood supply. It puts the baby's life in peril.

The situation would prompt a whirlwind of action from a team of health care professionals who swiftly moved Abby's mother from the doctor's office on one floor to the birthing center above it, prepared a C-section area and delivered a baby girl, all in the record span of about 9 minutes.

Abby had been born but was in critical condition and would spend 15 days in the neonatal intensive care unit at a Pittsburgh hospital.

The more Salvino listened to the story, the more she realized she'd heard it before from her friend, Pam Welsh, who had been part of this health care team who saved Abby's life.

That led to texts and calls between Salvino and Welsh of the do-you-remember variety, piecing together a puzzle from the past.

While nurses may remember emergency cases, rarely do they learn the long-term outcome.

This would be an exception.

Salvino would text Welsh with the confirmation -- "This is your baby."

A NORMAL DAY GOES ABNORMAL

The day Abby Balzano was born, Welsh was working a 12-hour day-turn shift in the birthing center, having what up to that point had been a normal day. At the time, Trinity's birthing center was on the third floor of Trinity East, the former Ohio Valley Hospital building.

But on the second floor, in the office of Dr. Narong Chinakarn and Dr. Rogelio Mupas, second-time mother-to-be Rachel Balzano was in distress. Her water had broken, but there was more to it.

Welsh answered the emergency call from the doctor's office. It was a prolapsed umbilical cord. Welsch began barking out orders.

"I said set up the C-section room -- it was an emergency, call the pediatricians, anesthesia, I grabbed a cart (gurney) and I took it down to the office," said Welsh, whose nursing career was close to 40 years before her retirement, 30 of them in the local hospital system. She is a 1975 graduate of the former Ohio Valley School of Nursing.

"It was an extreme emergency, and everybody knew it right away," Welsh said. "It's a serious emergency when it happens in labor and delivery. Had it happened in the parking lot, Abby would have been dead," Welsh speculates.

"I took the cart down through everybody. I didn't have the presence of mind to have somebody monitor the elevator so it would be available when we came back, and I went down and there she was -- she was the bravest mother I've ever known in all my years," Welsh said. "She knew how serious it was, on the floor, with a physician there, and we had to lift her up off the floor into the cart."

"She did whatever we said and she's on a cart with her bum up in the air, her head down on her chest, somebody keeping that baby off the cervix and me driving.

"And I wasn't quiet about it -- I'm not a quiet person anyway," admits Pam. "Everybody got out of the way, probably because they were afraid," she laughs in retrospect.

Although now it may seem a bit humorous, "I'm sure it wasn't at the time," Welsh said.

"The one thing I remember is once we came on to the birthing center floor, there were other people there in labor and visitors in the waiting room," Welsh recalled. "Here I have this young mom who I know had to be terrified and trying her best to do whatever needed to be done. I didn't know whether I was able to find enough to cover her up a little bit. I had no idea how much of her bottom was showing, she was exposed from the waist down except for a blanket of some kind over her, but I didn't know how much, so coming around the bend I just kind of yelled -- everybody stand, walk and put your noses to the wall -- so that nobody can be looking at her when I came by," Welsh reminisced.

"Everything ended up working out well. She was so brave. We got her into the birth center and to the surgery area and it was set up ready to go, anesthesia was there, the pediatricians were there, the other physician was there, they were all ready to go, and we got her in and got her out."

"It was 9 minutes from the time my water broke until she was out of my stomach," Rachel said.

"You were so brave and whatever needed to be done, it was a very difficult situation, but she did everything we asked and didn't question anything. I know she was probably inside in a huge panic but it didn't appear that way on the outside," Welsh said.

"That time frame was pretty much incredible, and it worked out perfectly. and God was with us," Welsh said.

MEET THE 'MIRACLE BABY'

Abby Balzano is a pretty, petite, 2018 graduate of Edison High School. She has a brother, Mason, who is 17 months older.

Although in childhood she wanted to be a veterinarian, by her sophomore year, that changed to nurse. "I needed to do something to help people," she reasoned.

She has since decided to be an OB nurse like Welsh and Salvino.

Abby learned early on about her unconventional arrival.

"I think we started talking about it when she was little," Rachel said of her daughter's dramatic debut on earth. "We told her she had a helicopter ride at 1 day old."

As an assignment when she was pursuing her education degree, Rachel wrote about her birth experience, calling it "Abbigael's Big Day Out."

At her doctor appointment, Rachel said she was having a little pain, some cramping, which led to her being sent upstairs to the labor and delivery floor for a labor and determination test. She walked by the restroom, though, and decided to stop first.

"All was well until I stood up -- all of a sudden I felt a gush of water that seemed to never stop. Something was different about this gush of water as opposed to my first pregnancy," Rachel wrote, thinking her baby's leg was hanging out.

"The doctor heard me yell and from around the corner he came running. He looked and said, 'It's not the baby, it's the umbilical cord.' It was then I realized things could go very bad, and I was more scared than I ever was in my entire life," she continued. "They pulled me from the restroom and laid me down on the floor. It was whirlwind and I didn't know what was happening. The doctor said, 'Hold on because this is not going to be comfortable.' He all of a sudden put the cord back where it had come from. He needed to relieve the pressure on the cord and try to supply oxygen to my unborn daughter. It took all I had to not scream out in pain but I know I needed to do whatever it took to save my daughter," Rachel continued.

"They called upstairs to get an emergency gurney so they could get me upstairs as fast as they could," Rachel explained, noting she would be on her way to having an emergency Cesarean section. "The nurses came from upstairs and were throwing chairs around the waiting room to try and get the gurney in the room. They finally got me onto the gurney and the ride upstairs seemed to take forever. I had to ride upside down, almost in a head stand position to keep the pressure off the cord so my daughter could breathe. The doctor had to keep his hand and the cord pushed up inside for the entire ride and for as long as I remember.

"That was the longest, scariest ride of my life, wondering if my daughter would be born without problems or if she would even survive," Rachel wrote.

All of this happened in about 9 minutes.

Abbigael was born and then spent 15 days in a Pittsburgh hospital before coming home.

"Dr. Chinakarn said it was the first time he'd seen that in 35 years," said Rachel, who earned a teaching degree in K-12 special education at Franciscan. She teaches at Indian Creek Middle School.

"You were so brave," Welsh said to Rachel on more than one occasion during the interview.

Under general anesthesia, Rachel said she was "half in and out" when Abby was born and then life-flighted to Pittsburgh "because I'm pretty sure he said not only was my cord hanging out, but it was wrapped around her neck. He said it was one of the longest cords he'd ever seen."

Welsh said when Abby was born, she was stressed. "She wasn't breathing. She needed assistance. She didn't come through the birth canal. She would have had extra fluid in her lungs, but she was delivered and had a low birth score because of the stress and trauma just to get her here and get her out," Welsh said.

"I was at Trinity three days (after Abby's birth)," Rachel said. "I made them release me. I didn't get to see her at all except for 2 minutes before she left (for Pittsburgh). My husband and I went straight from the hospital to Pittsburgh to see her."

SO GOOD TO CONNECT

Becky Salvino, whose nursing career has spanned 47 years, was familiar with the "Miracle Baby" story because everybody at the hospital knew about it and talked about it.

"It was a big thing in the hospital, a big event - forget about HIPPA," Salvino said.

It was cause for congratulating all those involved who had made the delivery happen in 9 minutes from off the unit is miraculous. It happened in the building where it only took minutes for all the people involved to do what they had to do, and they all did it exactly, correctly."

Welsh said the "Miracle Baby" never completely left her thoughts through the years.

"She was never history," Welsh said of Abby, whose name and outcome she didn't know before now.

"This one never was. I truly prayed for them (baby and mother) for years."

"Just to know the pieces all fell together that day, how it was supposed to be. I was humbled to be a part of it," Welsh said.

"The miracle is her pediatrician told me 99 percent of the kids born that way either die or are developmentally challenged," Rachel said, noting Abby graduated ninth in her class from Edison High School. "She is so smart."

"To be honest, every month that she was alive up until she was 3, I was a nervous wreck thinking that she wouldn't meet her milestones because they said the way she was born most kids have some sort of issue, so every month they watched her. Every month she passed her milestones except she didn't roll over or sit up or crawl until she was 9 months old. From 0-9 months she didn't meet any of the milestones, but then at 9 months, she rolled over, sat up, crawled and walked," Rachel said.

"I was excited to connect with Pam," Rachel said, "because of all the people who were there that day, her voice I remember the most."

"I am so honored to meet you," Welsh said when she finally saw Abby in person.

Ditto for Abby.

"I'm grateful. I appreciate that she was there to help save my life and protect my mom," Abby said of her meeting with Welsh.

"I was doing my job," Welsh said. "It's such an answer to prayer that I get to met you after all this time. I always have wondered, always, where is she, where did she go, what happened with her and here you are."

"It could have been so much more difficult had you been in panic mode," Welsh said to Rachel. "You didn't show it -- you were just being the mom, and moms will do anything for their babies, and you're a perfect, perfect example."

(Kiaski can be contacted at jkiaski@heraldstaronline.com.)