When Gabrielle Daigle’s son, Andrew, caught a cold at six weeks of age, breathing complications led to a diagnosis of a rare lung disease called Congenital Lobar Emphysema that occurs in 1 in 20,000-30,000 people. Andrew's recovery ultimately led her to become a milk donor for Mothers’ Milk Bank of North Texas. Here is her story, in her own words, first published on Mama.Gab.net:
One Saturday night, my husband and I both woke up hearing our baby boy sneezing and coughing. We both groaned. He had picked up my 2 year-old’s cold! But babies get colds all the time and since this wasn’t our first baby, we already knew what remedies to try. But a few days later, our newborn was only getting worse. My husband was incredibly concerned and insisted we take the baby to the ER one night. And I had to admit, his cough was pretty funky. I could also see some indrawing at his ribcage.
After many tests and scans at our local ER, doctors told us that Andrew had Congenital Lobar Emphysema. His lungs could take air in, but they could not remove air easily. The top lobe on his left lung was ballooning up with air and was so large that his trachea and heart were displaced into the right portion of his chest. Treatment was available, but not at our hospital. We chose to go to Dallas. After about two hours of prepping him for air travel, we were ready to go around 6:30 am. The plane touched down at Love Field in Dallas, and then we took another ambulance to Children’s Medical Center. We arrived at the hospital and quickly made our way to ICU, where a room had already been prepared for him.
I was asked to sit and a surgeon, a fellow, and then an anesthesiologist took turns discussing his surgery with me and asked me to sign papers giving my permission for surgery. Without surgery, he would die. In surgery, the doctors would go in between his ribs, doing a thoracotomy, and then a lobectomy would be performed on his left lung. The left lung has two lobes or halves, while the right lung has three lobes. His top left lobe was the one with lobar emphysema, so it would be removed completely. When the surgeon described all of it, I was shocked. The entire top half of his left lung? Removed? All of it?!? But it was the only option.
Surgery would take a few hours, during which I prayed, talked with various friends and family, and pumped. Seriously. Protecting my milk supply became a high priority for me, because it seemed like the only thing I could possibly do for my child at that point. I put myself on a pumping schedule and stuck with it until Andrew was able to nurse again.
Once surgery was over, I met with the surgeon. She said everything went perfectly, and no surprises came up at all. She described recovery and reiterated that his left lung would grow back completely
While in ICU, he had excellent care around the clock. Each nurse was only assigned two children to care for, and their rooms were side-by-side, so we saw the nurse constantly. He had an IV and then later a feeding tube (with my expressed milk in it) and with all the gadgets attached to him, there was very little Damian and I could do for him. We could comfort him if he was upset or just talk, sing, and pray over him. His progress was slow, but it was progress, and eventually he was stable enough to be moved out of ICU.
Five days later, we moved to the surgical floor, where they got me settled into a rocker and configured the wires and cords so that I could hold Andrew. It felt so good to hold my baby boy for the first time in five days, and I was so happy, I cried. When I laid him down again in his bed so he could be transported, he gave me a sweet smile, his first smile since the ordeal began. He loved the physical contact just as much as I did. 
Later, we moved beyond the feeding tube to giving bottles, so I was pumping almost exclusively for 2 weeks--the nurses were "complaining" (cheerfully) that he had so much breastmilk, they had to put it on different floors of the hospital. Their freezer wasn't large enough!
When we were discharged, I had 90 ounces of breast milk in their freezer! I didn’t want to take it home with me on our three hour drive and risk spoilage, so I began researching milk banks. That’s how I discovered Mothers' Milk Bank of North Texas, and I learned that it had the best reputation among the local hospitals, especially Children’s Medical Center where our son had been treated. I made arrangements to donate all of the milk, which was a super easy process.
At Andrew’s release from the hospital, the doctor and dietitian were incredibly concerned about his weight gain. I felt confident that if he had unlimited access to nursing, he would gain weight rapidly, since he was such a great eater from birth. Sure enough, a week after our discharge, he was 12 pounds, 2 ounces, and he’d only weighed 10 pounds, 5 ounces two weeks prior. That’s nearly two pounds in two weeks! It usually takes babies 16 days to gain a pound–one ounce per day.
Now that Andrew has had surgery for CLE, he is finally a normal child with no respiratory issues. In fact, his lung grew back! A child’s body can actually regenerate lung tissue, so his lower lobe has expanded to fill in the entire area where the top lobe used to be. At 3, Andrew is completely healthy now and only has a scar to show for the ordeal.
For more details about Gabby's journey of becoming a milk donor, access her blog by clicking HERE.
For more information about Mothers' Milk Bank of North Texas and how to become a donor, visit our WEBSITE.