BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (WBRC/Gray News) – A child in Alabama is expected to be going home for the first time after spending over a year in the hospital.
Carli Brasfield was 26 weeks along when she had an emergency C-section in June 2024.
Barrett Brasfield was born, weighing 1 pound. Lung issues and infections kept him in the Regional Newborn Intensive Care Unit at UAB for eight months, followed by four months in the NICU at Children’s of Alabama.
But by April of this year, he was strong enough to get a trach, and on Monday, he is expected to be discharged from the hospital.
“You’re in the fight of your life. It just started from the day he was born. It was just what can we do to help him get home,” Barrett’s mother said.
In the first year of his life, Barrett’s milestones were different from those of other newborns. Rather than their first bottle or first time crawling, Carli Brasfield and her husband, Roman, celebrated the first time they got to change his diaper and even hear him cry.
“Recently, he got to use a device called a Passy Muir Valve. And most parents don’t want to hear their baby cry, but this device allows us to hear him and the air to pass over his vocal cords. So to hear him cry for the first time was a huge day for us,” Barrett’s father said.
The family said they first believed Barrett would be home by the fall, then by Christmas, but after getting sick, they knew they would just have to wait for the perfect time to take him home.
After 403 days, that time finally appears to be coming up.
“It’ll be an amazing moment to take him home and cross the threshold of our home with him for the first time. We’ve had a nursery set up for months. It’s been great to see him in his room and experience that,” the boy’s father said.
The couple says they are looking forward to simply being parents.
“He is so full of life. He laughs, he plays, he rolls, he is sitting up, he eats … he is so full of joy. You would never believe he has been in the hospital for 400-plus days because he is just so full of life,” Carli Brasfield said.
Barrett will be discharged with his trach, vent and G-tube, but doctors said he should grow out of them over the next few years with a few surgeries.
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