Camie Rose Weber

Camie was born on March 30, 2022 after a routine and uncomplicated pregnancy. She was our 2nd daughter, with her big sister being 18 months old at that time. Everything was going fine during Camie's labor and delivery...until it wasn't. At the end, our medical team was having a harder and harder time finding her heartbeat after decels with contractions. At one point, I will always remember looking up and realizing we were "that" room that had 10-15ish people in it ready to help... it was at that point where I realized things were really bad, and I started to wonder if we'd get to meet our little girl alive. After only 8 hours of labor Camie was born. She was floppy and unresponsive and the NICU team quickly took her across the room to work on stabilizing her. At our hospital, the NICU team comes to your room, instead of taking the baby away, and while I am thankful she never had to leave us, it was very, very hard listening to her team work on reviving and stabilizing her while being able to do nothing. 

Pretty quickly they were able to get Camie stabilized and informed us that she was going to be life flighted to Iowa City to begin cooling treatment  (therapeutic hypothermia), which we later learned was to prevent further damage to her brain as they had evidence that she suffered from a lack of oxygen/blood to her brain at some point in the delivery process (Hypoxic Ischemic Encephalopathy). I was able to join my husband and Camie the next day in Iowa City. 

From there, the next 3 weeks in Iowa City were a roller coaster. We had many ups and downs, lots of high hope, and crushing news. Ultimately we learned that the damage to Camie's brain was significant and life expectancy was not great. We were discharged from Iowa City exactly 3 weeks after we got there and got to bring Camie home with the support of Hospice. 

We spent the next 5 weeks loving on Camie, adjusting to her medical needs, and making as many memories as we could, because we knew our time was going to be limited, though we never expected how limited. A few days before Camie was 2 months old, her body was just too tired to battle the impacts of her injury any more, and she became our Angel. 

We will forever spend our days wishing she was here and grieving all of the things we didn't get to do with her, all of the dreams we had, the memories we were supposed to make, but we also spend all of our days finding ways to celebrate her and the time we did get, for those memories made will forever be cherished.