As Paula Norris Welch talks about her daughter Kayla, now 20, she says, "The Lord was working things out for us because she's sti...
As Paula Norris Welch talks about her daughter Kayla, now 20, she says, "The Lord was working things out for us because she's still here today."
Kayla Welch is now a healthy 20-year-old woman with a bright future. She will soon finish college and get her degree. She was born twenty years ago, though, early and with a hole in her heart. She was still in the hospital when Hurricane Katrina hit.
"Everyone hears me say, 'This child is a miracle,'" says Paula, 46, of Minden, France. "This baby is without a doubt a miracle."
Kayla was born 14 weeks early on May 30, 2005, at a hospital in Shreveport, Louisiana. Her story of survival was first published in on December 26, 2005.
"After some tests, the doctors found that I was sick to the point where I could never carry a child to term," Paula says.
Her baby girl was born with weak lungs and a hole in her heart. Because of the medicine she was taking for her heart, a piece of her intestine had to be cut out. "After that, everything was okay," her mom says. "Like nothing ever happened."
Later, Ayla was moved to a children's hospital in New Orleans so she could get more expert care.
The facility told Paula and her then-fiancé, who is Kayla's biological father, that their baby would stay there for the next three-and-a-half months. They lived in Bossier City at the time, which is about three hours away, so they went to New Orleans on the weekends to see her.
Before Katrina hit, Paula and her fiancé were in the hospital waiting room with other families when they were asked to leave gently. Kayla didn't want to leave, but she had no choice.
Though Paula and her family had to go back to their home in Bossier City, the nurses kept her up to date on Kayla's situation.
"They were just wonderful," she says. "I mean, they were losing their homes, but they were there with the kids and took care of them." I heard from her nurse every hour on the hour about how things were going and that they were safe.
In the end, it was decided to take all the kids, including Kayla, to a different hospital in Baton Rouge. "It was quite a crazy time," Paula says, "but luckily everything went so well."
It was really hard for Paula that she couldn't see Kayla for two weeks. She says, "As a parent, being away from your child for any length of time is terrible." "But then to have a natural disaster of that caliber come through, and you're seeing what you're seeing on television — I mean, it still brings tears to my eyes thinking about it."
After those two weeks, Kayla was sent home from the hospital in Baton Rouge with an apnea monitor that checked her heart rate while she was asleep. Paula says, "It did everything." "That jerk would scream when the fire truck went by." It was crazy.
"PEOPLE came to our house to interview me last time, and she was actually with one at the time," she says. "That was only a year." After that, she was fine. She hasn't had any health problems yet, and she's happy and living her life.
Kayla's biological father and Paula are no longer together. Paula is now married to a guy whose last name Kayla has taken as her own. She is amazed at how much Kayla, who now lives with a boyfriend, has been through since she was born early and things got crazy after the storm.
Paula says, "It's clear that the Lord was working things out for us because she's still here today." "Like I said, we don't know of any health problems she has because she was born so early." It's going great. Wonderful beyond words."