A British couple has mixed feelings about the birth of their daughter Lily. The girl was born three months early and is now fighting for her life in an American hospital.
The worries aren’t over for Louis Borrill and his fiancée Yeridiana Chazares. They were on vacation in the United States at the time of the delivery. And they will now have to stay there until Lily is sufficiently strengthened. They do not have medical travel insurance, which means that the bill threatens to rise to more than 330,000 euros.
Chazares visited her family in Baltimore to celebrate the happy news of her pregnancy. When she felt feverish one morning, she decided to go to the hospital just to be safe. There, the couple found out that the woman was about to give birth.
“The hours leading up to the birth were hectic. We didn’t know what to do and we were both very worried. But at the same time, we also realized that we had to stay calm, our daughter could be born at any moment,” said Borrill.
The next morning, Lily was born with a weight of just 765 grams. She could not breathe on her own and had to be kept alive with a tube. She may not be discharged from the hospital for three or four months, meaning the family cannot return to their home until then.
Louis said, “Obviously, we were shocked by this, we planned to have Lily in Scunthorpe and then we found out that we were going to have her born here, and in the back of our minds, we knew what was going to come.”
Although in pre-term labour, the doctors told Louis and Yeri that this waiting period could have been anywhere between a few hours to a few months, with them having to remain in the hospital throughout.
In three weeks, the girl has made a lot of progress although there were also a few very cramped moments in between. Her breathing stopped twice and she had to be ʀᴇsᴜsᴄɪᴛᴀᴛᴇᴅ.
According to the doctors, it will take another three to four months before Lily is completely out of the danger zone. She is not allowed to leave the hospital before then. “We didn’t take out medical insurance because it cost 4,400 euros,” said Louis. “Because of the pregnancy, there was a lot of calculation. For ten days, however, that seemed seriously exaggerated. Now that decision is coming back in our face like a boomerang.”
Yeri spoke about the ᴘᴀɪɴ of seeing her first-born child having to be put in an incubator and continuing to be monitored by doctors and specialist surgeons. She said, “Having contractions and a ᴄ-sᴇᴄᴛɪᴏɴ doesn’t compare to the ᴘᴀɪɴ I felt seeing my first-born in an incubator covered in tubes and tinier than I could have ever imagined. All day I blamed myself, thinking that if maybe I had done something differently Lily would have made it to full term.”
Louis said, “I’m so proud of my little fighter, she’s doing really well at the moment and I’m sure in the next few months she will continue to do so. I am so proud of Yeri. She handled everything so perfectly and was incredible.”
The couple has started a fundraiser to pay the peppered hospital bill. The counter is currently at more than 2,000 euros.