Taylor Family Story

When Ashley’s baby was born 23 weeks early, she knew there was only one thing to do: ‘Everything possible'
The road to becoming a parent looks different for everyone. Maybe you’re not ready to start a family until you’re 37; maybe you need IVF; maybe your baby ends up in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). That’s how Ashley and Mitch Taylor’s story began.
After her first round of IVF, Ashley got pregnant. The pregnancy was going smoothly until one morning, at 18 weeks, Ashley’s water broke while she was getting ready for work. “I screamed at the top of my lungs to Mitch,” she recalls, and he drove her to the closest hospital, Inova Alexandria, in Virginia. “I was panicking, but I knew I had to be calm,” Mitch says. “I thought that we had lost the pregnancy.”
After being evaluated, Ashley was transported to Inova Fairfax Hospital where she was put on bed rest to help save the pregnancy. “I stayed on the third floor up here, which is for moms that are all going through the same thing-something's happened, they've had some kind of complication, and they're waiting as long as they can to have their baby,” she says.
Ashley remained there for about five weeks-five weeks of excruciating back pain and uncertainty-until she went into labor. Julia was born at 23 weeks and six days, weighing 1 pound, 2.3 ounces. She was 10.1 inches-small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
Preterm birth and its complications are the largest contributors to infant death in the U.S. and globally. It’s possible for women to have healthy pregnancies, but the U.S. remains among the most dangerous developed nations to give birth. In the U.S. each year, 1 in 10 babies is born preterm.
Help us support families like the Taylor's, and raise awareness of the prematurity health crisis. Learn more: www.marchofdim...