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In the Loop: Born too soon, Baby Finleigh is thriving
Lisa Strike was only 26 weeks into her pregnancy. So when she began experiencing contractions while visiting family on Easter Sunday 2015, she initially chalked them up to nothing more than Braxton-Hicks contractions. But as the contractions increased in intensity and frequency, she knew they were more than just a warm up. "After we got home around 7 p.m. that night, I texted my doctor at Olmsted Medical Center, and she suggested I call in to the Birth Center there and get checked out," Lisa tells us.
By that point, Lisa's contractions were 10 minutes apart "on the dot." Then, they started getting a lot shorter. "So my husband said, 'Let's just go in, and we'll call on our way,'" Lisa tells us. "I still wasn't thinking that I was going to have a baby that night."
So Lisa and her husband, Chad, drove to Olmsted Medical Center. "We got to the Emergency Department around 9:15 p.m., and they were expecting us," Lisa says. "I had two super strong contractions on the way, but my water hadn't broken yet."
Thirty minutes later, despite being given medications to try and slow her labor, that changed. "They had initially called for an ambulance to take me to Mayo Clinic, but after my water broke at 9:45 p.m., they knew I probably wasn't going to make it there in time," Lisa says. "So they called for Mayo's NICU transport team."
Young Finleigh Strike would enter the world at 10:28 p.m. And immediately afterward, members of that team swooped in to start giving her the care she needed to survive her early arrival. "The transport team got there just in time, which was lucky for us because they took control of things from there," Lisa tells us. Read the rest of the story.
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This story originally appeared on the In the Loop blog.