a journey to be

“We had arrived in Fargo on June 30th; three days later we knew why we had moved here,” says Kelli’s mom and dad, Kay and John Blair. “It made no sense at the time for us to pull up roots and move so far from home.”

But with such a huge challenge in front of Kelli and Jason, they needed all the support they could get.

August 9, 2007 — “We had another ultrasound and saw all four babies. There were hands and feet and arms and legs everywhere. It was amazing!”

The first two months of Kelli’s pregnancy passed by in a blur of excitement tempered by nausea and panic. “I try not to worry but I get anxious thinking about how all four babies are doing,” she wrote when she was about 12 weeks pregnant.

Kelli’s doctor hoped the babies could stay in the womb until 28 weeks [7 months]. With such a high-risk pregnancy, Kelli knew that would be a miracle but she believed God was on her side.

As summer ended, it appeared Kelli needn’t be worried. Ultrasounds continued to show the babies growing at the same rate, with fully-developing hearts and functioning kidneys. By early September, Kelli was back to feeling confident. “I finally started being ok with it,” she recalls. “I slowly got out of my fog and then I remember I started thinking it’s ok, I can do this.”

The Medders and their team of doctors created a game plan for getting Kelli and their baby girls through the pregnancy. At 18 weeks, Kelli would go on home bed rest and then a month later, she would move to Minneapolis for hospital bed rest.

Wyatt would have to enter daycare, something Kelli, who had always wanted to be a stay at home mom, had taken immense pride in not using. “I remember it was very difficult for me. I was a stay at home mom, my job was Wyatt,” she says. “I never thought I would have to do daycare but I had a friend who told me, ‘Your job now is to be a mom to the girls that are inside,’ and I hadn’t thought about that yet.” Luckily, Wyatt loved daycare which helped ease Kelli’s mind.

A 16 week ultrasound showed Kelli and her babies were healthy but her doctor decided bed rest should start a couple of weeks earlier than planned. Kelli passed the time reading, surfing the internet, praying and trying to keep food down. “I was starving but I was sick a lot because of all the hormones so it was hard to keep food down but I knew I needed to eat a lot because of calories.”

All was progressing as planned and Kelli and Jason even picked out names for the girls. Baby A would be Annika, Baby B – Berkley, Baby C – Callie and Baby D – Daley.

September 28, 2007 “We have some very serious concerns with babies A and D. The prognosis for baby A is not good, as the doctor does not think she will live to a viable age. My heart is broken and hurting.” What was by now a routine ultrasound visit to Minneapolis turned into anything but when doctors discovered a grave abnormality in two of the babies. Annika and Daley were suffering from twin-to-twin transfusion, a condition in which the girls were not only connected to the placenta but were also sharing blood vessels. This resulted in Annika having an enlarged heart and early signs of congestive heart failure. “She was really active in there,” Kelli says, smiling at the memory. “She was my little bud, I felt her more than any of the other girls.” Meanwhile, Daley had too small of a heart and wasn’t growing.

The news was devastating. The survival of all four girls was at risk as a very blunt doctor told them there were no options because there were too many babies. “I was emotionally and physically drained,” Kelli recalls with a pause. “I remember writing that I would love to have the chance to be the mother of four little girls.”

But there was hope. “Monday, October 1st, was the most empowering day for me as a woman, as a mom,” Kelli recalls with conviction in her voice. “I guess you always expect what doctors tell you to be the truth because they’re the ones who have been going to school for it and have been doing it for a while, but in my heart I just knew we couldn’t take the doctor’s words that there was nothing that could be done.”

Kelli quickly put her bed rest internet research skills to good use and found a doctor in Rhode Island who could perform a rare surgery to separate the shared blood vessels and give each girl a chance to flourish on her own. “The surgery was not a guarantee that everything would be okay, but the statistics as a result of the surgery were more promising than not doing anything,” Kelli says.

On October 4th, Kelli was in Rhode Island with her hopes pinned on a successful surgery, but she was not prepared for what happened next. “At some point during the wee hours of the morning I noticed I didn’t feel Annika anymore,” she says, wiping a tear from her cheek. Drifting in and out of consciousness, Kelli prayed for movement. But the next morning, an ultrasound confirmed only three beating hearts; Annika had passed away. The painful decision was made to keep Annika inside the womb until Kelli delivered the other babies.

That night Jason wrote on the family’s blog: “It hurts. It hurts badly. However, we know that everything that could be done for her was done.”

The surgery did offer a glimmer of good news for Daley. Fluids began pumping toward her bladder and within a month, her vital numbers were as strong as Berkley’s and Callie’s. At that point, Berkley weighed 16 ounces, Callie, 14 ounces, and Daley, just 9 ounces.

November 4, 2007 “I never knew when the girls came, I never heard them cry. They were taken immediately away.”

A month passed since Kelli’s surgery. She remained on bed rest and did her best to keep the babies healthy. But the pregnancy was taking its toll on her body and soul. She couldn’t keep food down and doctors had to insert an IV for fluids. Her hospital floor lacked internet so she felt cut off from her friends and family. Although she had her baby girls with her, it was a very lonely time for Kelli but she leaned on God to pull her through.

And then the worst thing that could happen did—Kelli went into labor at 6 months. “I was 24 weeks and six days,” she says. “My goal was to make it to 28 weeks; that would’ve been huge.”

Her body - and the babies - had other plans. Despite medications and other interventions, doctors could not stop Kelli’s contractions and she agreed to undergo a C-section. With Jason by her side, doctors began the delicate task of removing the babies from her womb. “It was a very serious situation but Jason was fantastic,” Kelli says. “He’d think of funny stories or things we’d done together and that’s the only thing that kept me calm.” Within minutes of delivering, doctors came to Kelli’s beside with dire news. Daley, the baby girl who had fought so hard to recover from her twin-to-twin transfusion surgery, died shortly after birth. “They had tried to breathe for her, but she was only 8 ounces,” explains Kelli quietly.

Jason and Kelli huddled together as they cradled Daley for the first and only time. “She was perfect in every way, just too small to sustain life,” Jason wrote about the experience.

“It was just a precious, precious time with her that I wouldn’t trade for anything to be able to hold her,” Kelli says.

Meanwhile, Berkley and Callie were rushed to the NICU where a team of doctors and nurses were able to stabilize the newborns. “They were very tiny but they were all the spitting image of each other,” remembers Kelli, like any proud parent. “They all just looked exactly alike.”

November 7, 2007 “Today has been one of the longest days of our lives.”

For three days, both girls continued to thrive in the NICU. But an ultrasound revealed more devastating news. Berkley had a significant brain bleed and a severe lung infection. Doctors told Kelli and Jason they had done everything they could but that Berkley would not get better. The couple made a difficult decision and took her off her ventilator.

“The last thing I wanted was one of my girls to die in a bed, poked by a whole bunch of things, you know, doing everything to keep her alive, I just couldn’t do that,” Kelli says, her strong demeanor crumbling at the memory. “We were able to hold her like we did with Daley while she died, praying for a miracle. Praying that something would happen and we’d have some signs that maybe she’s recover from this, but she passed away on the 7th and that left us with Callie.”

Although the loss of three of her daughters devastated Kelli, the woman who dreamed of being a mother knew her other newborn daughter fighting to survive with each breath, needed her. “If I would have dwelled on my daughters’ deaths, there’s no way I could have been there for Callie,” explains Kelli. “I would have been an emotional wreck, trying to change something that I couldn’t change—the girls were gone and we did everything we could.”

So Kelli forged on in Minneapolis for Callie, living away from Jason and Wyatt and her family and friends. She lost weight. Her hair started turning gray. “I would go to my room and cry for the girls and grieve. And for me it’s a miracle that I didn’t suffer from depression or psychosis or something, because after all the losses…” she trails off, unable to finish her thought.

Jason remembers the emotional toll the entire experience had on his wife. “She struggled with being on bed rest by herself in Minneapolis while her husband and son were four hours away, but she knew it was the best thing to do,” Jason says. “She was TOTALLY committed to doing everything in her power to have a successful pregnancy for our girls, and she fought for them with all her might.”

Kelli kept that routine for 208 days. She sat by Callie’s side as the little girl endured eight surgeries, numerous needle pokes, and countless other invasive procedures. “You’d think we’d be on the right track for going home and then she’d just go backward and that’s how it was,” Kelli says. And then, on the 209th day, Kelli’s prayers were answered. Callie was cleared to go home and the Medders family was reunited.

“When you look back at the long road Callie came along, it’s impossible to deny that miracles really do happen!,” says Sarah Beck, one of Kelli’s best friends.

Callie has made great strides since returning home, but still requires some physical and speech therapy. “I’ve decided I don’t want to be the mom that’s like, ‘oh this girl has been through so much’ pampering her and babying her. Because she would run with it!,” Kelli says, laughing. “But she’s the kind of child you have to push and I feel like the love I have for her is kind of a tough love to push her and challenge her, knowing that she can do more than she’s doing. That’s how it was in the NICU and that might just be how it is for the rest of her life.”

May 12, 2010 — “Our most exciting news is our newest member of our family - Sadie Rose Medders. Sadie was born April 14, 2010, weighing 6 pounds, 11 ounces and 19 inches long.”

Just as life was falling into a new normal for the Medders, came one of the biggest decisions Kelli and Jason needed to face—whether or not to have more children. But with Callie nearly 3-years-old, the Medders decided it was time to expand their family.

“We were nervous wrecks, nervous the very first time we had an ultrasound,” Kelli says. As much as she wanted a healthy and happy child, Kelli also struggled with the idea of having a girl. “As soon as I didn’t see boy parts, I bawled,” she recalls. “Jason was fine but I just cried the rest of the ultrasound because I’m not ready for this; I can’t relive this girl stuff again.”

An unlikely moment at the doctor’s office between Kelli and Jason, quelled any fears she was having. “I was starving and we had to wait a while to see the doctor. Jason had a fortune cookie in his pocket. The cookie was great but the fortune inside was even better.” The tiny piece of paper read, ‘Good things come in small packages. One is coming to you’. For Kelli, it was a sign from God that he was in control and this was the baby he had planned for their family.

Through the support of her husband, family, friends and faith, Kelli found the strength to accept bringing a new baby girl into the world. They named her Sadie and she and Callie are the best of friends. Even better, Kelli says, is that Sadie has reminded them of the simple joys a baby can bring. “So now I have a baby that laughs and coos and makes noise and it’s really fun to have a normal moment and enjoy that.”

For Kelli, just getting to be a mom is a blessing, no matter what struggles she’s endured along the way. “I think I’m more determined than I thought I was. If you would have told me, you are going to get pregnant with four girls and three of them are going to die, I would have told you no way, there’s no way I’ll be able to handle that,” she says, adding, “but when faced with it, I did handle it, I did make it through.”

Kelli’s road to motherhood has been winding, full of twists and turns, joy and heartache. Yes, she’s always dreamed of being a mom, but if you ask her if she would change anything about the journey she took to get there, her answer is simple. No.