Toddler Spent His First 403 Days in the Hospital. His Parents Say They’re ‘So Blessed’ to Finally Have Him Home (Exclusive)

NEED TO KNOW

• Barrett Brasfield was born 26 weeks premature on June 6, 2024

• He spent the next 403 days in the NICU at two different hospitals, battling lung and other health issues

• Barrett was finally discharged on July 14 of this year and is now home with his parents

When Barrett Brasfield grows up, his parents will have an interesting tale to tell him about how he spent his first year. After being born weighing just 1 lb., he spent the next 403 days in two different hospitals’ neonatal intensive care units before he was finally able to go home.

“He’s adjusting better than us,” mom Carli tells PEOPLE. “It’s been a whirlwind.”

“Hopefully, he doesn’t remember any of it,” adds the 34-year-old nurse practitioner at UAB Hospital, before quipping, “and hopefully, after a lot of therapy, we won’t remember some of it.”

“We joke about the trauma bonding but it definitely made us much tougher and stronger,” adds dad Roman, 33.

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The Brasfields’ unforgettable journey began more than a year ago when Carli, then 20 weeks pregnant, learned during an anatomy scan that her baby boy had some health issues and would need to be delivered earlier than expected.

“The umbilical cord delivers blood flow from mom to baby, and that’s a forward flow,” the Alabama mom explains. “You can have intermittent bad flow where the flow kind of stops, or you can have what’s called reverse flow, where the flow is going the opposite direction.”

“At some of our appointments, he had that intermittent flow,” she adds, but, by their 26-week appointment, “he had reverse flow.”

“We were taken aback about how early [the delivery would be] because, after speaking with our doctors, we felt we had a little more time,” says Roman, who also works at UAB Hospital. But eventually it got to a point where the parents were told they needed to deliver — immediately.

So Carli was admitted to UAB Hospital and welcomed Barrett via an emergency caesarian section on June 6, 2024.

At the time of his birth, Barrett weighed only 1 lb. and was immediately taken to the hospital’s NICU.

“It was surreal, because it was a mix of emotions,” Roman recalls. “Obviously, you’re excited about your child being born, but you hope for better circumstances.”

One of the hardest parts for Carli was when she was discharged from the hospital, knowing she couldn’t bring her son home too. Fortunately, the couple only lived minutes away.

In the NICU, Barrett experienced a severe form of bronchopulmonary dysplasia, a chronic lung disease associated with premature babies. ”He was intubated on and off for about nine months total,” Carli says, which, although necessary, caused even more damage to his lungs.

The couple initially hoped to have Barrett home that September, but he kept having infection after infection, which kept him on the ventilator a little longer.

“Within his first week of life, he got a bloodstream infection, which on top of the ventilator, really gave him about a 30% chance of survival during some of those really bad days,” says Carli.

And although at one point, his health improved, during cold and flu season, he contracted rhinovirus, which made him very sick, and he needed to be put back on the ventilator.

After eight months at UAB, Barrett was moved to the NICU of Children’s of Alabama when a bed became available this February. There, he underwent a tracheostomy, a surgical procedure in which a tube is inserted into the hole of the neck to help with his breathing.

“That was a game-changer for him,” says Roman, “just getting access to a lot of specialty care that he needed. So that’s when you started to see things turn for the better.”

“He woke up from his tracheostomy ready to thrive, roll, play, laugh and get out of bed,”  Carli adds.

Over time, Barrett’s weight increased to 19 lbs. — and he kept making progress. Soon Carli and Roman began training on how to use a home ventilator and a gastrostomy tube, which feeds the baby through their belly, in preparation for Barrett’s long-awaited homecoming.

“It was surreal for sure,” Roman says. “We truly couldn’t believe it.”

At one point during Barrett’s hospitalization, Carli and Roman say that doing something as simple as changing his diaper seemed like a victory.

“You’re celebrating making it through the night,” says Carli. “There were a lot of periods in the fall and winter that [we] questioned, ‘Should we even be doing this? Should we not be fighting so hard and focus more on his comfort than advancing his life?’ “

“Thankfully,” she adds, “our team kept fighting for us.”

Since his discharge from the NICU last month, Barrett remains hooked up to his ventilator, trach and gastrostomy tube as he settles into his new home with his parents and his older brother, Asher, 6. Carli hopes that the issues with Barrett’s lungs will be reversible over time as well.

“We’re hoping to have him off the ventilator, maybe within the next year,” she says. “And we’ve got some other surgeries that we need, some airway stuff that we’ve got to do before we can fully take the trach out. But our goal is that maybe [when he turns] 4-6 years old, we’re living a pretty normal life.”

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Both Carli and Roman credit their community, Barrett’s medical team and faith for helping them when things were touch-and-go with Barrett.

“We just consider ourselves so blessed,” Carli says. “A lot of people are like, ‘How are y’all standing after 400 days in the hospital?’ He’s so worth it. We would do 403 days all over again just to have this little guy home for sure.”

Read the original article on People