Ginger Philpot

Our names are Marc and Ginger Philpot, parents of VP Miracle, Jaci. She was born on July 8, 2002. We had never even heard of anything like this, but we very quickly learned what it was like to feel that you could actually lose one of your children. Of course, VP is not mentioned in any books anywhere and until it happened to us, it was never even a possibility since we had never heard of it. We have a long history of problems including 3 miscarriages, 1 ectopic pregnancy, and 1 live birth that was the "perfect" pregnancy. Until one month after - where as we learned later, I had a bilobed placenta that did not deliver at birth. I had the VERY heavy postpartum bleeding. We have several questions because hindsight is 20/20. During the pregnancy with Jaci, my doctor had informed us that my placenta was low-lying and that I did have a bilobed placenta. He never informed us that we might be a candidate for vasa previa. He may not have known a whole lot about it himself because later he told my family that he had only actually seen this in one other case and he's been in practice for about 12 years.

I was induced with not a thought of anything wrong on Monday, July 8, 2002. They had set up my IV and given me pitocin. The contractions starting coming and when I was about at a 4, my doctor came in and artificially broke my waters. That's when the nightmare began.

My husband was sitting in a chair behind the doctor just getting ready when the look on his face was so downcast and he was white. The doctor looked up at the nurse which was beside me. It felt like the water had broke, but when I looked down, the whole bed was covered in blood. That's when the heartbeat could not be heard on the monitors. The nurse started jerking cords out of the wall and the doctor was hollering to get more nurses in the room. My husband was pushed out of the way and told he could not come with us because they were going to have to do an emergency C-section. That time seemed like a lifetime.

We got into the cold operating room and I was prepped and Jaci was out in 13 minutes from the time they lost her heartbeat. Later, I was told by my husband who was in the hall, when they were getting her to the nursery, she was as white as snow. Of course, I am completely out of it and I wake up in the recovery room not knowing where or how she is. The nurse tells me that she was weak, but that she will be ok. The next people I see are my husband and the pediatrician. He informs me that Jaci had lost 80% of her blood supply and that they were doing a blood transfusion at that very time. He also informed us that we would have to care flight her to a bigger hospital with a neo-natal unit. My husband went with her immediately and I finally got to join them 2 days later. She was beautiful. I had only seen her for about 5 minutes before she was care-flighted out and I was still out of it even then. She was in the critical care unit for a day in Dallas where she had to receive another transfusion. She was moved the next day to the B unit which is not so critical. We stayed at that hospital for 6 days and then she was released. She is 6 months old now and seems to be doing fine. I would just like to know a little more.

We know that a lot of prayers were answered with Jaci being able to stay with us. We are so sorry for the ones that had to lose life because of this problem that we believe could be monitored a little closer and prevented. The OB's need to realize that this is very serious and if someone has all of the warnings signs, don't overlook it.